"It looks very lonely ... but I like it," and she sat long, with her
hands clasped round her knees, gazing out over the wandering yellow
line of sandhills, and the slow-heaving seas which broke in
white-fringed ripples along the beach.
"And you left no ties behind you there in England?" she asked suddenly,
showing where her thoughts had been.
"No ties whatever. Friends in plenty, but nothing more. When my
father died I was quite alone in the world."
She nodded fellow-feelingly, and they sauntered back in a somewhat
closer intimacy of understanding and liking for one another.
XXX
Macro had had a good day out there, and returned in the best of humours
with himself and as hungry as usual.
As he ate he enlarged on his finds, and when he had finished his supper
he piled the fire with light sticks to make a blaze, and spread them
out for Miss Drummond's inspection.
He had evidently lighted on the personal baggage of some person of
quality. There were rings and brooches and pins and bracelets, of gold
and silver, set with coloured stones, a couple of small watches
beautifully chased and studded with gems, a small silver-mounted mirror
all blackened with sea-water, two gold snuff-boxes with enamelled
miniatures on the lids--quite a rich haul and very satisfactory to the
craving of his spirit.
The Girl examined them all carefully, and Wulfrey, watching her quietly
through the smoke of his pipe, thought she handled them somewhat
gingerly and distastefully, and understood her feeling in the matter.
And now and again he caught also a glimpse in the mate's black eyes, as
they rested on her, of that which she herself had felt and resented.
It might be only the unconscious continuation of the gloating
proprietorial look with which he regarded his treasures, which still
gleamed in his eyes when they rested on her as though she herself were
but one more of them. But whatever it was it was not a pleasant look,
and Wulfrey was not surprised at her discomfort under it. He was as
devoutly glad that he was there as she could be. Alone with this wild
riever, in whom the cross-strain of his wilder forebears was running to
licence in its sudden emancipation from all life's ordinary
shackles.... It would not bear thinking of. Yes, he was truly glad he
was there. And then he remembered, with another grateful throb, that
if he had not been there, neither would she have been. For the mate
most assuredly would never have brought her back to life.
"Some of these are of value," she was saying. "But they are rather
pitiful to me.... Some dead woman has treasured them and she is gone.
Perhaps you came upon her skeleton out there.... But they are not all
real stones----"
"And how can ye tell that now?" asked Macro gruffly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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