“Yes,” replied Beryl deliberately, “but only to remind myself I was a beast. I won’t open it. I’ll keep it. It’s none of my business why you call yourself Holbeach.” Even then Andria could not bring her shame to her lips. Beryl should never know if she could help it. If not, she had the envelope; it would save her if Heriot were not back and Raimond got her. He might swear till he was black in the face and his own handwriting would damn him. “We may just have a scene and be left here,” thought Andria, “but somehow I don’t think so.” She looked from her bedroom window with weary eyes and saw there was no sign of any one coming off the yacht. “I wish I knew just what they meant to do.” But it would have comforted her very little if any one had told her that Brian Heriot had known these two hours past. CHAPTER XXVII. THE HAND OF FATE. “Thou sleepest? Awake! What darest thou get for her sake?” Mr. Egerton stood in his cabin on the _Flores_ making a hasty toilet. His thin face was savage as he shaved, and his hand shook as if from bodily fatigue. “Why the devil doesn’t Raimond come?” he thought, and gashed his cheek till he swore aloud, though at the same instant the door had opened on his son, a disheveled object in silk pajamas. “You’d better sit down and wait a moment!” said the newcomer. “Have a drink?” Erceldonne mopped his bleeding face. “Have the goodness not to drawl, I hate it,” he said angrily. “You can’t be as indifferent as you pretend after the night’s work!” “I’m not. I’m much less indifferent,” he said, with a short laugh. “I begin to have a hankering after that little devil, now since she’s been sharp enough to deceive you. I believe if you threw a girl into the sea she’d come up smiling in some man’s arms!” “It wasn’t the girl. It was that damned governess. But how the man ever got here----” “Doesn’t matter now, that I can see,” answered Egerton, with a shrug. “You’re sure it was the governess? I thought you said she was old.” “I said she was an excellent woman,” replied Egerton dryly. “All the same. But Mattel said he saw the girl in his arms. Heriot’s! And the last man in the world to----But it doesn’t matter.” “I didn’t believe Mattel, like a fool! Or we could----” “We couldn’t have done any better. I thought it was all up when I heard you laugh and saw the light go out. I was in time, though. But, by the Lord, if I’d known it was Heriot I don’t think I’d have done it!” “You would have turned out Erceldonne penniless, I suppose, and let him walk into your shoes! You’re sure it’s all right?” “Yes, I tell you!” said Raimond, with sudden vicious savagery. “Let it alone!” It was the son who was pale now, not the father.