Suddenly the old serenity and peace came back to the upturned face. The smile he asked for shone in her sweet eyes. “Good-bye, my Randolph—my husband—good-bye. Yes, I do bid you do your duty. May God bless and keep you always.” For a moment they stood together, heart pressed to heart, their lips meeting in one long, lingering kiss; for one moment a strange shadow as of farewell seemed to hang upon them, and they clung together as if no power on earth could separate them. The next moment he was gone, and Monica, left alone, stretched out her hands in the darkness. “Oh, my love! my love!” It was the one irrepressible cry from the depths of her heart; the next moment she repeated dreamily to herself the words that had lately passed her husband’s lips: “‘Whatever happens, we are in God’s hands. Remember that always.’ Randolph, I will! I will!” A ringing cheer told her that the boat was off. Nobody had seen the slim figure that had slunk after Randolph down to the beach. No one, in the darkness and general excitement, had seen that same slim figure leap lightly and noiselessly into the boat, and crouch down in the extreme end of the bow. Conrad Fitzgerald had witnessed the parting between husband and wife; he had heard every word that had passed between them; and now, as he crouched with a tiger-like ferocity in the bottom of the boat, he muttered: “This time he shall not escape me!” CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH. WIDOWED. The boat launched by the rescuing party vanished in the darkness. Monica stood where her husband had left her in the shelter of the cliff, her pale face turned seawards, her eyes fixed upon the glimmering crests of the great waves, as they came rolling calmly in, in their resistless might and majesty. Beatrice had twice come back to her, to assure her with eager vehemence that the danger was very slight, that it was lessening every moment as the wind shifted and abated in force—dangerous, indeed, for the poor fellows in the doomed vessel that had struck upon the fatal reef, but not very perilous for the willing and eager and experienced crew that had started off to rescue them. Beatrice urged this many times upon Monica; but the latter stood quite still and spoke not a word; only gazed out to sea with the same strange yearning gaze that was like a mute farewell. Was it only an hour ago that she had been with her husband at home, telling him of the dim foreboding of coming woe that had haunted her all that day? It seemed to her as if she had all her life been standing beside the dark margin of this tempest-tossed sea, waiting the return of him who made all the happiness of her life—and waiting in vain. Beatrice looked at her once or twice, but did not speak again. Presently she moved down towards the water’s edge. Surely the boat would be coming back now! Suddenly there was a glad shout of triumph and joy from the fisher-folk, down by the brink of the sea.