"Ah! Mr. Granger, now you must live for other things. Live to see your wrongs redressed, your honour restored, your name cleared. You have heard from my husband that there is proof of your innocence." "Yes," he said. "Yes, I have heard." But, still with his head bent, he whispered the same words he had said to Sir Geoffrey outside on the quarterdeck, "It is too late." "No. No. It is not too late. Geoffrey and I have talked together, and to-morrow he will go to see their Lordships. Oh! Mr. Granger, if you could return to your old calling, if you could once more serve the King in these troublous times, even in a subordinate position, yet with hope before you, would you not do so? Would you not lead a different life?" "God knows I would, bankrupt as are all my hopes, all my future. Yet--you are aware of what I have been? Of what I am?" "Yes, I know," and, although he could not see it, there was in her face a look of sublime pity for him. Pity that this man, still young and handsome--how handsome he must have been when first he won Sophy's love she could well understand, even though judging only of him now as he sat before her in his desolation and abasement!--should have fallen to what he had. "There is," he went on, "no baser thing in all this world than he who traffics in his fellow-men. Yet I elected to do it in my despair and bitterness. I might have earned a living otherwise, but this consorted with what I was, with what I had become." "It is not too late. Will you not leave this life for--for--in memory of Sophy?" "Yes," he whispered, "if you bid me do so for her sake--her memory. Yes. If my honour is cleared, but not otherwise, for otherwise it would be useless. If Sir Geoffrey, or any other captain, will take me, I will go back, even though as a seaman before the mast. I will do it for her sake, in return for your gracious pity of me." "Thank God!" she cried. "Oh, thank God!" Then she rose and went to the 'scrutoire and, opening it, took out the packet of letters that she had shown her husband. "Read them; do with them what you will. Read them now, if you desire." Whereon she put the little parcel in his hand, and, leaving him alone, went into the next cabin. "My love, my lost love," he murmured, as he glanced at them hurriedly, not knowing that she had gone away to give him ample time for their perusal. "My sweet. And we are parted for ever. For ever! To all eternity. Nothing can bring you back to me." That he had wept she knew when she returned, yet a man's tears for her whom he has loved and lost need no pardon from another woman's heart; and so she gently bade him take the letters and keep them, extorting only from him a promise that he would in no way endeavour to communicate with Lady Glastonbury. "For that," she said, "must never be. Neither sorrow nor trouble must ever come to her again. Have I your promise?"