‘This is the happiest day of my life,’ Lesbia murmured, in a pause of their reading, when they had dropped Endymion’s love to talk of their own.

’But not of mine, my angel.  I shall be happier still when we are far away on broader waters, beyond the reach of all who can part us.’

’Can any one part us, Gomez, now that we have pledged ourselves to each other?’ she asked, incredulously.

’Ah, love, such pledges are sometimes broken.  All women are not lion-hearted.  While the sea is smooth and the ship runs fair, all is easy enough; but when tempest and peril come—­that is the test, Lesbia.  Will you stand by me in the tempest, love?’

‘You know that I will,’ she answered, with her hand locked in his two hands, clasped as with a life-long clasp.

She could not imagine any severe ordeal to be gone through.  If Maulevrier heard of her elopement in time for pursuit, there would be a fuss, perhaps—­an angry bother raging and fuming.  But what of that?  She was her own mistress.  Maulevrier could not prevent her marrying whomsoever she pleased.

‘Swear that you will hold to me against all the world,’ he said, passionately, turning his head to look across the stern of the vessel.

‘Against all the world,’ she answered, softly.

‘I believe your courage will be tested before long,’ he said; and then he cried to the skipper, ’Crowd on all sail, Tomaso.  That boat is chasing us.’

Lesbia sprang to her feet, looking as he looked to a spot of vivid white on the horizon.  Montesma had snatched up a glass and was watching that distant spot.

‘It is a steam-yacht,’ he said.  ‘They will catch us.’

He was right.  Although the Cayman strained every timber so that her keel cut through the water like a boomerang, wind and steam beat wind without steam.  In less than an hour the steam-yacht was beside the Cayman, and Lord Maulevrier and Lord Hartfield had boarded Mr. Smithson’s deck.

‘I have come to take you and Lady Kirkbank back to Cowes, Lesbia,’ said Maulevrier.  ’I’m not going to make any undue fuss about this little escapade of yours, provided you go back with Hartfield and me at once, and pledge yourself never to hold any further communication with Don Gomez de Montesma.’

The Spaniard was standing close by, silent, white as death, but ready to make a good fight.  That pallor of the clear olive skin was not from want of pluck; but there was the deadly knowledge of the ground he stood upon, the doubt that any woman, least of all such a woman as Lady Lesbia Haselden, could be true to him if his character and antecedents were revealed to her.  And how much or how little these two men could tell her about himself or his past life was the question which the next few minutes would solve.

‘I am not going back with you,’ answered Lesbia.  ’I am going to Havre with Don Gomez de Montesma.  We are to be married there as soon as we arrive.’