“She’s the _Seamew_, a hundred-and-twenty-ton schooner,” replied the
man.
“And to whom does she belong?”
“To Lord Castleton.”
Fenella started. “To Lord Castleton!” she repeated blankly.
“Ay, ay! but he aint aboard her now; he have lent her, I hear, to a
friend who has had her for the last six weeks. She started from this
very port, did the _Seamew_, six weeks ago, bound for Madeira and the
Canary Islands, where she have been cruising about ever since, and now
she have come home again to the very day, as she was expected to do.”
“You are quite _sure_ Lord Castleton is not on her?” inquired Fenella,
earnestly.
“Sartin sure, Miss”--they always called her “Miss,” she was so young
and girlish!--“his lordship was off to the south of France the werry
day she started, and that’s how he came to lend his schooner to his
friend.”
Fenella breathed anew. “And the friend’s name?” she inquired, after a
minute; but her acquaintance had already moved away from her side, and
was talking to some cronies of his own further on.
The yacht had settled down to her moorings in the dock. The crowd began
to disperse--there seemed nothing more to wait for, and Fenella, with
the rest, moved away.
She had an errand or two to do in the town before going home, and so
she clambered up the steep, irregular, picturesque little street, and
went about her small shoppings. Just as she was about to turn into a
baker’s shop, half-way up the hill, a man’s tall slender figure, in
a blue serge suit and peaked cloth cap, suddenly darkened the narrow
doorway.
“Frank!” she gasped, falling back a step.
“My God--_Fenella_!” he said; and for a moment they stood there--pale,
speechless, petrified, gazing with horror and despair into each other’s
faces.
CHAPTER X.
BY BRAM STOKER.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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