"And you, too, love," she murmured. "You have suffered also, have you not? But you will get well, now that I have come back to you, my husband! Oh, how thankful I am I did not perish in the gloomy sea that dark night when I was swept into the water with Lizette. Now I will stay by you and nurse you while you get strong again. Oh, Dorian, how I love you! Hold me tight, darling; do not let any one take me away from you!" They were wild with joy over their reunion, and to neither one came the slightest presentiment of the cruel truth--that these were parting as well as greeting kisses. Something put out the dim flame of the lamp, and there was the sound of a heavy, creaking footstep in the room. The next moment Nita was torn rudely from her husband's arms, and her head and face muffled in something dark and heavy, and she was borne swiftly away from the yacht. CHAPTER XX. A GHOST ON BOARD SHIP. Quite close to the yacht _Nita_ was moored a trimly built, compact little sailing vessel of which Jack Dineheart, the sailor, was master. It was toward this little bark that he bore Nita after his daring exploit in kidnaping her from the Rhodus house. He had lain at anchor near the island two days, and was getting ready to sail that night when, upon starting on an errand to the house of Fisherman Rhodus, he had been startled by seeing Nita's face behind the barred window as she watched her husband's yacht in the bay with sorrowful eyes of love and longing. After his brief, angry conversation with the girl, Jack Dineheart had forgotten all about his errand, and rushed away toward the yacht with murder in his heart toward Dorian Mountcastle. Upon nearing it, and seeing several men upon her deck, his wrath became tempered with prudence, and he retreated toward his own vessel, where, after fortifying himself with several glasses of liquor, he concocted the scheme of kidnaping the imprisoned girl and carrying her to sea with him, and perhaps back to Pirate Beach to the grim guardianship of his mother, old Meg Dineheart, the fortune-teller. Laughing in fiendish glee at the discomfiture of the deceived Lizette, the sailor bore Nita away in his strong arms, his heart leaping with joy. In the old cabin by the seaside at Pirate Beach, Jack Dineheart had watched a lovely, somber-eyed little child budding into exquisite girlhood, and when she was barely fourteen had sought her for his bride. Her proud refusal had been followed by a year of such bitter persecution on the part of himself and his witchlike mother, that at fifteen Nita had fled from them to the great metropolis where her valiant struggle to earn her bread had ended three years later in Central Park, and she had given her hand in marriage to the old miser for the means of saving herself from starvation or suicide.