"What of the weather?" she asked.
"The wind is fair and steady enough. We should reach Brittany in eighteen hours or less."
Dona was silent, and he went on touching her hair. "I have no cabin-boy," he said. "Do you know of a likely lad who would sail with me?"
She looked at him then, but he was not smiling any more, and he moved away from her, and picked up his sword.
"I shall have to take William, I'm afraid," he said. "He has played his part at Navron, and your household will know him no longer. He has served you well, has he not?"
"Very well," she answered.
"If it were not for the scrap he had tonight with Eustick's man, I would have left him," he said, "but recognition would come swift and fast, and Eustick would have hanged him without scruple. Besides, I hardly think he would have stayed to serve your husband."
He glanced about the room, his eyes alighting for a foment on Harry's portrait, and then he walked to the long window, and flung it open, drawing back the curtains. "Do you remember the first night I supped with you?" he said, "and afterwards you stared into the fire, and I drew your picture. You were angry with me, were you not?"
"No," she said, "not angry. Only ashamed, because you guessed too much."
"I will tell you one thing," he said, "you will never make a fisherman. You are too impatient. You will keep getting tangled up in your line."
Someone knocked at the door, and "Yes?" he called in French, "have the gentlemen done what I commanded them?"
"They have, monsieur," answered William, through the door.
"Very well then. Tell Pierre Blanc to tie their hands behind their backs, and escort them to the bedrooms above. Close the doors upon them and turn the keys. They will not trouble us for two hours, which will give me the time we need."
"Very good, monsieur."
"And William?"
"Monsieur?"
"How is your arm?"
"A trifle painful, monsieur, but not seriously so."
"That is good. Because I want you to take her ladyship by carriage to that spit of sand three miles this side of Coverack."
"Yes, monsieur."
"And there await my further orders."
"I understand, monsieur."
She stared at him, puzzled, and he came and stood before her, his sword in his hand. "What are you going to do?" she said.
He waited a moment before he answered, and he was not smiling any more, and his eyes were dark.
"You remember how we talked together last night by the creek?"
"Yes," she said.
"And we agreed that it was impossible for a woman to escape, except for an hour and a day?"
"Yes."
"This morning," he said, "when I was working on the ship, and William brought me the news that you were alone no longer, I realised that our make-believe was over, and the creek was our sanctuary no more. From this time forward La Mouette must sail other waters, and find different hiding-places. And although she will be free, and the men on board her free, her master will remain captive."
"What do you mean?" said Dona.
"I mean that I am bound to you, even as you are bound to me. From the very first, I knew that it would be so. When I came here, in the winter, and lay upstairs in your room, my hands behind my head, and looked at your sullen portrait on the wall, I smiled to myself, and said, 'That - and none other.' And I waited, and I did nothing, for I knew that our time would come."
"What else?" she said.
"You, too," he said, "my careless indifferent Dona, so hard, so disillusioned, playing the boy in London with your husband and his friends, you guessed that somewhere, in heaven knew what country and what guise, there was someone who was part of your body and your brain, and that without him you were lost, a straw blown by the wind."
She went to him, and put her hands over his eyes.
"All that," she said, "all that you feel, I feel. Every thought, every wish, every changing mood. But it's too late, there is nothing we can do. You have told me so already."
"I told you so last night," he said, "when we had no cares, and we were together, and the morning was many hours away. At those times a man can afford to shrug his shoulders at the future, because he holds the present in his arms, and the very cruelty of the thought adds, in some desperate fashion, to the delight of the moment. And when a man makes love, my Dona, he escapes from the burden of that love, and from himself as well."
"Yes," she said, "I know that. I have always known it. But not every woman."
"No," he said, "not every woman." He took the bracelet from his pocket and clasped it on her wrist. "And so," he went on, "when the morning came and I saw the mist on the creek, and you were gone from my side, there came also, not disillusion, but realisation. I knew that escape, for me too, was impossible. I had become like a prisoner in chains, and the dungeon was deep."
She took his hand, and laid it against her cheek.
"And all day long you worked upon your ship," she said, "and you sweated, and toiled, and said nothing, and frowned that frown of concentration I have come to understand, and then - when you had finished - what was your answer?"
He looked away from her, towards the open window.
"My answer," he said slowly, "was still the same. That you were Dona St. Columb, wife of an English baronet, and mother of two children, and I was a Frenchman, and an outlaw, a robber of your country, an enemy to your friends. If there is an answer, Dona, you must make it and not me."
He crossed to the window once more, and looked back at her over his shoulder.
"That is why I have asked William to take you to the cove near Coverack," he said, "so that you can decide what you wish to do. If I, and Pierre Blanc and the rest of us, return safely to the ship through this cordon in the wood, and hoist sail without delay, and leave with the tide, we shall be abreast of Coverack by sunrise. I will put off in a boat to have your answer. Should there be no sign of La Mouette by daylight, you will know that something has gone amiss with my plan. And Godolphin perhaps will have at last the satisfaction of hanging that hated Frenchman from the tallest tree in his park."
He smiled, and stepped out onto the terrace. "I have loved you, Dona," he said, "in almost every mood. But mostly, I think, when you threw yourself down on the deck of the Merry Fortune, in Pierre Blanc's breeches, with blood on your face, and the rain streaming down your torn shirt, and I looked at you and laughed, and a bullet whistled over your head."
Then he turned, and vanished in the darkness. She stood still, without moving, her hands clasped in front of her, while the minutes sped. Then at last she realised, like someone who has woken from a dream, that she was alone, and the house was silent, and that she held her ruby earrings and her pendant in her hands. A draught came from the open window, blowing the candles on the wall, and hardly aware of what she did she went to it, and closed and bolted it, and then went to the door leading to the dining-hall, and opened it wide.
There were the plates and the dishes on the table, and the bowls piled high with fruit, and the silver goblets and the glasses. The chairs were pushed back, as though the guests had risen from their supper, and withdrawn, and there was a strange forlorn air about the table, like a still-life picture drawn by an amateur brush, in which the food, and the fruit, and the spilt wine lack life and reality. The two spaniels crouched on the floor, and Duchess, lifting her nose from between her paws, looked up at Dona, and whined uncertainly. One of the men from La Mouette must have snuffed the candles, and then left, in haste, before extinguishing them all; for there were three that remained burning, the grease dripping on the floor, and the light they gave was sinister and queer.