She started from a maze of confused fear at his knock at her door.
"A light, please. You have no bed here, and none of the other rooms are fit for you to-night; so I have brought this. I had to leave him--there."
"Why should you trouble?" she asked drearily, with lack-lustre eyes on his burden of blankets and pillows. "I can so easily sit up; it must be near morning now."
He gave her a look so full of passionate adoration that her eyes fell before it.
"Do you think I am going to let you suffer one little bit--one atom of discomfort because of _him?_ No, that shall not be; you shall never suffer."
"How can you ask? We may have made a mistake, Maud; perhaps we _hav'n't_ God knows. But if we have, why then--" He came over to where she was standing and took her hands in his. So they stood, those two alone, with nothing between them save a conscience which could be turned aside; every barrier raised by the world broken down by a strange fate, by a mere turn of the tide.
"Good-night, dear," he said, stooping to kiss her.
She made no reply, no protest; perhaps in her heart of hearts she knew that he said the truth. That if it was a mistake, why then--
The waves caught up that refrain also, as she lay with wide, sleepless eyes on the little camp-bed with which his care had provided her. "It is a mistake--you shall not suffer--it is a mistake--you shall not suffer."
When she woke next morning, a be-capped and be-aproned upper housemaid was bringing in her early cup of tea.
"Yes, milady, we 'ave hall come. Mr. 'Ooper 'e 'ave come too, milady. Indeed, if it 'adn't bin for Mr. 'Ooper, we should 'ave bin picking hup cattle in that horful Minch till hevenin'; but 'e took it on 'imself to tell the capting as master would willin' pay hextra for us to come as quick as might be. And thankful we was, milady, for some of us mightn't 'ave lived to see land."
Jane looked as if she certainly would have been one of those to succumb, and Lady Maud gave a sigh of relief.
"Tell Hooper to go to his master,--he wasn't very well last night,--and tell Josephine I shall breakfast in my room."
"Mr. 'Ooper 'ave gone to master," replied Jane in a voice which implied that the reminder was unnecessary; "and if you please, milady, Capting Weeks 'e 'ave come too. We picked 'im up with some cattle in a boat from some place as begins with an 'Hoich.'"