‘Mr Frank!’ said Norah at last, almost driven to bay by her terror lest her mistress should return at any moment and find him there—­unable to consider what was best to be done or said—­rushing at something decisive, because she could not endure her present state:  ’Mr Frank! we never heard a line from you, and the shipowners said you had gone down, you and everyone else.  We thought you were dead, if ever man was, and poor Miss Alice and her little sick, helpless child!  Oh, sir, you must guess it,’ cried the poor creature at last, bursting out into a passionate fit of crying, ’for indeed I cannot tell it.  But it was no one’s fault.  God help us all this night!’

Norah had sat down.  She trembled too much to stand.  He took her hands in his.  He squeezed them hard, as if, by physical pressure, the truth could be wrung out.

‘Norah.’  This time his tone was calm, stagnant as despair.  ’She has married again!’

Norah shook her head sadly.  The grasp slowly relaxed.  The man had fainted.

There was brandy in the room.  Norah forced some drops into Mr Frank’s mouth, chafed his hands, and—­when mere animal life returned, before the mind poured in its flood of memories and thoughts—­she lifted him up, and rested his head against her knees.  Then she put a few crumbs of bread taken from the supper-table, soaked in brandy, into his mouth.  Suddenly he sprang to his feet.

‘Where is she?  Tell me this instant.’  He looked so wild, so mad, so desperate, that Norah felt herself to be in bodily danger; but her time of dread had gone by.  She had been afraid to tell him the truth, and then she had been a coward.  Now, her wits were sharpened by the sense of his desperate state.  He must leave the house.  She would pity him afterwards; but now she must rather command and upbraid; for he must leave the house before her mistress came home.  That one necessity stood clear before her.

’She is not here:  that is enough for you to know.  Nor can I say exactly where she is’ (which was true to the letter if not to the spirit).  ’Go away, and tell me where to find you tomorrow, and I will tell you all.  My master and mistress may come back at any minute, and then what would become of me, with a strange man in the house?’

Such an argument was too petty to touch his excited mind.

’I don’t care for your master and mistress.  If your master is a man, he must feel for me—­poor shipwrecked sailor that I am—­kept for years a prisoner amongst savages, always, always, always thinking of my wife and my home—­dreaming of her by night, talking to her though she could not hear, by day.  I loved her more than all heaven and earth put together.  Tell me where she is, this instant, you wretched woman, who salved over her wickedness to her, as you do to me!’

The clock struck ten.  Desperate positions require desperate measures.