'That is what I desire to speak with you about, mother,' said Winefred, and there was a ripple in her voice. 'I have tried to repair some of the wrong done him by myself. Now I ask you――will not you do the like?' Mrs. Marley looked sharply at her sideways. 'What do you mean?' she inquired in a low tone, so low that Winefred could not hear the words, lost in the clicker of the pebbles displaced by their feet; but she knew what her mother said, for she was observing her face, and she read it in the movement of her lips. 'Mother,' she replied, 'you know what I mean. Recollect what the words were that you uttered, when he had let slip the rope, and was preparing to leap. Then you cried out――――' 'Do not repeat them. Bah! it was nonsense. I spoke any foolish words that came at random into my head.' 'I do not believe you when you say this,' said Winefred. 'Then, when off your guard, the truth came out.' Jane Marley looked down. Her veins swelled, her face became dark. 'Mother,' continued the girl very gravely, 'I believe what you then cried out. I believe that you found and kept the money that should have belonged to Jack Rattenbury. I shall have no peace of mind till every penny has been restored.' 'I have nothing of his.' 'Mother――you shall know something more. I cannot tell how it is, it came over me like the bursting of a wave upon my head. I and Jack――that is――I――I mean that I love him.' Her cheeks had become suffused, and she turned her face to the red rocks. 'What!' Jane Marley stood still, and became rigid, with both arms extended at her side, stiff, and her hands clinched. Every muscle in her face was knotted. 'What! You――you and that fellow, Captain Rattenbury's son! Love _him_? Him of all people! Are you mad? You can never take him.' 'No, mother, that is true, I cannot take him, so long as this wicked injustice stands between us. I know that well enough. No, I cannot be his. You have parted us.' 'It is well. I would he had broken his neck.' 'Then I would have died also. Of what profit would it be to you to have and keep that which you have got, if through retaining it you were crushed with the knowledge that you had wronged him, and that I, for love of him whose death I had caused, had also perished?' 'I do not say that I have anything of his. But suppose it were as you fancy. Do you think anything would have brought me to do it――but care for you?' 'If for me you did what is wrong――for my sake now undo it.' 'I cannot.' 'Till that be done, he and I remain apart.' 'If for that alone――I will not do it.'