She laughed suddenly and broke from him. "You mean that he has taken too much whiskey. Well! plenty of men do that, and you others think--think none--none the worse." Then she broke down, flinging her arms across the bed by which she had been standing. "Oh, my God! what shall I do? what shall I do?" Her outburst calmed him. "Go into the other room, dear; I will call some one." She turned on him as she knelt like a wild animal at bay. "No! not the servants! no one shall know. I will not have it. Let me help. I am quite strong." "Do you think I'd let you touch him?" he burst out. "Go! I'll manage." She crept away, cowed by his vehemence, overcome by the desire to obey which subdues most women when the command is from one they love. Back to the fire she had left so short a time ago. It was dull now, but a touch sent the responsive flames leaping up the chimney. Would any amount of care restore that confidence in herself which but an hour ago had defied fate? Eustace and she--Eustace and me. What evil chance was this? She started from a maze of confused fear at his knock at her door. "A light, please. You have no bed here, and none of the other rooms are fit for you to-night; so I have brought this. I had to leave him--there." "Why should you trouble?" she asked drearily, with lack-lustre eyes on his burden of blankets and pillows. "I can so easily sit up; it must be near morning now." He gave her a look so full of passionate adoration that her eyes fell before it. "Do you think I am going to let you suffer one little bit--one atom of discomfort because of _him?_ No, that shall not be; you shall never suffer." "How can you help it?" "How can you ask? We may have made a mistake, Maud; perhaps we _hav'n't_ God knows. But if we have, why then--" He came over to where she was standing and took her hands in his. So they stood, those two alone, with nothing between them save a conscience which could be turned aside; every barrier raised by the world broken down by a strange fate, by a mere turn of the tide. "Good-night, dear," he said, stooping to kiss her. She made no reply, no protest; perhaps in her heart of hearts she knew that he said the truth. That if it was a mistake, why then-- The waves caught up that refrain also, as she lay with wide, sleepless eyes on the little camp-bed with which his care had provided her. "It is a mistake--you shall not suffer--it is a mistake--you shall not suffer." III When she woke next morning, a be-capped and be-aproned upper housemaid was bringing in her early cup of tea. "Yes, milady, we 'ave hall come. Mr. 'Ooper 'e 'ave come too, milady. Indeed, if it 'adn't bin for Mr. 'Ooper, we should 'ave bin picking hup cattle in that horful Minch till hevenin'; but 'e took it on 'imself to tell the capting as master would willin' pay hextra for us to come as quick as might be. And thankful we was, milady, for some of us mightn't 'ave lived to see land."