"I wasn't speaking literally, of course." Vera went on. "But your curious expression----"
"It is so strange. It is not like grief, so much as remorse."
Marion broke into a queer laugh, a laugh she strangled. As she passed her handkerchief across her face she seemed to wipe out that strange expression.
"I hope remorse and I will remain strangers for many a long day," she said more composedly. "It is so difficult to judge from faces. And I must try to be brave like yourself. I have never given way before."
"I believe you are the bravest of us all, Marion."
"And I that I am the greatest coward. I have even been so weak as to allow the secret of my life to escape me. Vera, I want you to make me a most sacred promise."
"Then I want you to promise that Geoffrey shall never know of your discovery. At no time are you to tell him. Promise."
Marion looked up eagerly and met Vera's eyes. They were clear and true and honest; they were filled with frankness and pity.
"I promise from my heart," she said. "Not now nor at any time shall Geoffrey know what I have learned to-day."
"I am satisfied," she said. "He will never know."
Mrs. May sat out on the lawn before the rose-garlanded windows of her sitting room. A Japanese umbrella was over her dainty head, a scented cigarette between her lips. For some time she had been long and earnestly sweeping the sea with a pair of binoculars.
She rose at length and made her way down the garden. There was a rugged path at the bottom, terminating in a thicket that overhung the cliffs.
Here it would be possible for a dozen men to hide without the slightest chance of being discovered. Nobody ever went there by any chance. Shaded from the house, Mrs. May paused.
A softened whistle came from her lips, and then there came from the ground the dusky form of the man who called himself Ben Heer. He salaamed profoundly.
"Well!" the woman demanded impatiently. "Well?"
"Well, indeed, my mistress," the sham Ben Heer replied calmly. "It fell out as you arranged. Behold a puff of wind carried away the masts, and behold the oars came into fragments. Then the boat began to fill and now lies bottom upward at the foot of the cliff."
"But he might have been a powerful swimmer."