Frenchman's Creek

"You shall come to my room, and I will bathe your wound, and bind it for you," she whispered, and because he was barely conscious now, he protested no longer, but suffered her to lead him along the passage to her room, and once there she closed the door and bolted it, and helped him to her bed. Then she brought water and a towel, and in some fashion cleansed the cut in his shoulder, and bound it for him, and he turned his eyes up to her and said, "My lady, you should not do this for me," and "Lie still," she whispered, "lie still and rest."

His face was deadly white still, and she, knowing little of the depth of the wound or what she could do to ease his pain, felt helpless suddenly, and despairing, and he must have sensed it for he said, "Do not worry, my lady, I shall be all right. And at least my mission was successful, I went to La Mouette and saw my master."

"You told him?" she asked. "You told him that Godolphin, and Eustick, and the others were supping here tonight?"

"Yes, my lady, and he smiled in that way of his, my lady, and he said to me, 'Tell your mistress I am in no way disturbed, and that La Mouette has need of a cabin-boy.' " As William spoke there was a footstep outside, and someone knocked at the door. "Who is there?" called Dona, and the voice of the little maid-servant answered, "Sir Harry sends word to your ladyship, that he and the gentlemen are awaiting supper."

"Tell Sir Harry to start, I will be with them directly," said Dona, and bending down again to William she whispered, "And the ship herself, is all well with the ship, and will she sail tonight?" But he stared back at her now without recognition, and then closed his eyes, and she saw that he had fainted.

She covered him with her blankets, scarcely knowing what she did, and washed the blood from her hands m the water, and then, glancing in the mirror and seeing that the colour had drained away from her face too, she dabbed rouge high on her cheek-bones with unsteady fingers. Then she left her room, leaving William unconscious on her bed, and walking down the stairs into the dining-hall she heard the scraping of the chairs on the stone floor as the guests rose to their feet and waited for her. She held her head high in the air, and there was a smile on her lips, but she saw nothing, not the blaze of the candles, nor the long table piled with dishes, nor Godolphin in his plum-coloured coat, nor Rashleigh with his grey wig, nor Eustick fingering his sword, not all the eyes of the men who stared at her and bowed low as she passed to her seat at the head of the table, but only one man, who stood on the deck of his ship in the silent creek, saying farewell to her in thought as he waited for the tide.

CHAPTER XVIII

So, for the first time for many years, there was a banquet in the great dining-hall of Navron House. The candles shone down upon the guests as they sat shoulder to shoulder, six a side, at the long table, and the table itself was splendid with silver and rose-bordered plate and large bowls piled high with fruit. At one end the host, blue-eyed and flushed, his blond wig a little askew, laughed a shade too loudly and too long at every jest that passed. At the other end the hostess toyed with the dishes set before her, cool, unperturbed, throwing glances now and again at the guests beside her as though he on her right hand and he on her left were the only men who mattered in the world, she was theirs for this evening, or longer if they so desired. Never before, thought Harry St. Columb, kicking at one of the dogs under the table, never before had Dona flirted so blatantly, made eyes so outrageously. If this was the result of that confounded fever, God help all the fellows present. Never before, thought Rockingham, watching her across the table, never before had Dona looked so provocative; what was passing through her head that moment, and why had she walked through the woods towards the river at seven o'clock that evening, when he had thought her asleep in her bed?

And this, thought every guest who sat at her table, this is the famous Lady St. Columb, of whom, from time to time, we hear so much gossip, so much scandal; who sups in London taverns with the ladies of the town, who rides bareback in the streets at midnight in her husband's breeches, who has given something of herself, no doubt, to every philanderer at St. James's, not to mention His Majesty himself.