These were the reflections which now troubled Crayford, and which presented him, after his rescue, in the strangely inappropriate character of a depressed and anxious man.  His brother officers, as he well knew, looked to him to take the chief responsibility.  If he declined to accept it, he would instantly confirm the horrible suspicion in Clara’s mind.  The emergency must be met; but how to meet it—­at once honorably and mercifully—­was more than Crayford could tell.  He was still lost in his own gloomy thoughts when his wife entered the boat-house.  Turning to look at her, he saw his own perturbations and anxieties plainly reflected in Mrs. Crayford’s face.

“Have you seen anything of Clara?” he asked.  “Is she still on the beach?”

“She is following me to this place,” Mrs. Crayford replied.  “I have been speaking to her this morning.  She is just as resolute as ever to insist on your telling her of the circumstances under which Frank is missing.  As things are, you have no alternative but to answer her.”

“Help me to answer her, Lucy.  Tell me, before she comes in, how this dreadful suspicion first took possession of her.  All she could possibly have known when we left England was that the two men were appointed to separate ships.  What could have led her to suspect that they had come together?”

“She was firmly persuaded, William, that they would come together when the Expedition left England.  And she had read in books of Arctic travel, of men left behind by their comrades on the march, and of men adrift on ice-bergs.  With her mind full of these images and forebodings, she saw Frank and Wardour (or dreamed of them) in one of her attacks of trance.  I was by her side; I heard what she said at the time.  She warned Frank that Wardour had discovered the truth.  She called out to him, ’While you can stand, keep with the other men, Frank!’”

“Good God!” cried Crayford; “I warned him myself, almost in those very words, the last time I saw him!”

“Don’t acknowledge it, William!  Keep her in ignorance of what you have just told me.  She will not take it for what it is—­a startling coincidence, and nothing more.  She will accept it as positive confirmation of the faith, the miserable superstitious faith, that is in her.  So long as you don’t actually know that Frank is dead, and that he has died by Wardour’s hand, deny what she says—­mislead her for her own sake—­dispute all her conclusions as I dispute them.  Help me to raise her to the better and nobler belief in the mercy of God!” She stopped, and looked round nervously at the doorway.  “Hush!” she whispered.  “Do as I have told you.  Clara is here.”

Chapter 17.

Clara stopped at the doorway, looking backward and forward distrustfully between the husband and wife.  Entering the boat-house, and approaching Crayford, she took his arm, and led him away a few steps from the place in which Mrs. Crayford was standing.