"Yes!" she replied. "You! You--who have earned for ever her undying hatred by doing so; by making her a lady by lies, by intriguing, by duplicity. A lady! Yet your wife! Had you left me in the Rue Trousse Vache--in the garret over the fence school--whose wife should I have been now? Answer that, Simeon Larpent, answer that." "The wife of a man," he said, quietly and calm again in a moment, for he had the power to allay the tempestuous gusts that overtook him occasionally almost as quickly as they arose, "who, if the fates are not more propitious than I deem they will be, rides at the present moment to his doom, to a halter that awaits him. A man who rides on a fruitless journey to England as volunteer with his cousin Balmerino in the train of Charles Edward; a man----" "Whom," she interrupted again, "I loved with my whole heart and soul; whom I loved from the first hour my eyes ever gazed on him. A man whom you separated me from with your Jesuitical lies--they did well to educate you at Lisbon and St. Omer--a man who, if God is just, as I do believe, shall yet live to take a desperate vengeance on you. And for the reason that he may do so, I pray night and day that Charles Edward will fight his way to London. Then you must meet--unless you flee back to France again--then, Lord Fordingbridge, you must stand face to face with him at last. Then----" "Then you trust to be a widow. Is it not so, my lady? You will be free then, and Bertie Elphinston may have the bride I stole from him. Is that your devout aspiration?" "Alas, no!" she replied. "Or, if it is, it can never come to pass. If Bertie Elphinston saw me now he would shrink from me. He would not touch my hand. He would pass across the street to avoid me." As she uttered the last words there came from over the swirling, troubled sea the boom of a cannon, accompanied a moment afterwards by harsh cries and orders from the deck of the Galliot, and by the rattling of cordage and a sudden cessation of the slight way that was still on the vessel. "What does that gun mean?" asked Lord Fordingbridge as he started to his feet, while Fane and Mr. Archibald re-entered the cabin hastily. "It means," said the disguised Jesuit, who spoke as coolly and calmly as ever, "that the vessel which has been following us since dawn is King George's--he forgot on this occasion to term the English king 'the Elector of Hanover'--Bomb-ketch the 'Furnace.' She has fired the gun to bring us to. Doubtless they wish to inspect our papers and to see there are no malignant priests or Jacobites on board. We are now in English waters and within two miles of Harwich, therefore they are quite within their rights." "Bah!" exclaimed his lordship. "Let them come. What have we to fear?"