"Who's that?" called Harry from his room. She did not answer, but slipped into her room, shutting the door, and in a few moments she heard his footstep outside her door, and only just in time she flung her cloak aside and lay down on her bed, throwing her coverlet over her knees, for he burst in without knocking, as was his custom, clad only in his shirt and his breeches.

"Where the devil has that fellow William gone to?" he said. "He has the key of the cellar hidden somewhere, and Thomas came to me about the wine. He tells me William is nowhere to be found."

Dona lay still, her eyes shut, and then she turned on her side and looked up at Harry yawning, as though he had woken her from sleep.

"How should I know where William is?" she said, "perhaps he is chatting with the grooms in the stables. Why don't they search for him?"

"They have searched," fumed Harry; "the fellow has simply disappeared, and here we are with George Godolphin and the rest coming to supper and no wine. I tell you, Dona, I won't stand for it. I shall sack him, you know."

"He will come back directly," said Dona wearily, "there is plenty of time."

"Confounded impudence," said Harry, "that's what happens to a servant when there's no man about the place. You have let him do exactly as he pleases."

"On the contrary, he does exactly what pleases me."

"Well, I don't like it, I tell you. Rock's quite right. The fellow has a familiar impudent manner about him. Rock's always right about these things." He stood in the middle of the room, looking moodily down at Dona, his face flushed, his blue eyes choleric, and she recognised at once his usual manner when a little drunk, and that in a moment or two he would become abusive.

"Did you win at piquet?" asked Dona, seeking to distract him, and he shrugged his shoulders, and walked over to the mirror and stared at himself, smoothing the pouches under his eyes with his fingers. "Do I ever win for ten minutes at a time playing with Rock?" he grumbled. "No, it always ends with my losing twenty or thirty sovereigns, which I can ill afford. Look here, Dona, am I going to be allowed in here to-night?"

"I thought you were to be employed in catching pirates."

"Oh, that will be over by midnight, or soon afterwards. If the fellow's in hiding on the river somewhere, as Godolphin and Eustick seem to think, he won't stand a dog's chance. There are men to be posted everywhere from here to the headland, and on either side of the river to boot. He won't slip away from the net this time."

"And what part do you propose to take yourself?"

"Oh, I shall be a looker-on, and come in at the kill. And we'll all have a drink, and have no end of fun. But you haven't answered my question, Dona."

"Shall we leave it until the time comes? Knowing what you are usually like after midnight you won't be caring very much if you lie down in my room or under the dining-table."

"That's only because you're always so damned hard on me, Dona. I tell you it's a bit thick, this business of you running off here to Navron and leaving me to kick my heels in town, and then catching some Tom-fool fever when I do come after you."

"Shut the door, Harry. I want to sleep."

"Sleep my foot. You're always wanting to sleep. It's been your answer to me under every circumstance now for God knows how long," and he stamped out of the room, banging the door, and she heard him stand a moment on the staircase and bawl out to the servant below whether that scoundrel William had returned.

And Dona, getting up from her bed and looking out of the window, saw Rockingham come back across the lawn, with the little dog Duchess pattering at his heels.

She began to dress, slowly and with great care, curling her dark ringlets round her fingers and placing them behind her ears, and into the ears themselves she screwed the rubies, and round her neck she clasped the ruby pendant. For Dona St. Columb in her cream satin gown, with her ringlets and her jewels, must bear no resemblance to that bedraggled cabin-boy of La Mouette, who with the rain streaming down his thin shirt, had stood beneath Philip Rashleigh's window only five days ago. She looked at herself in the mirror, and then up at the portrait on the wall, and she saw how she had changed, even in the short while she had been at Navron, for her face had filled out, and the sulky look had gone from her mouth, and there was something different about her eyes, as Rockingham had said. As for her gypsy tan, there was no concealing it, and her hands and throat were burnt too by the sun. Who in the world will believe, she thought to herself, that this is the result of a fever, that the sunburn is a jaundice-Harry perhaps, he has so little imagination, but Rockingham, never.

Presently she heard the jangle of the stable bell in the courtyard, and this was the first of the guests arriving, his carriage driving to the steps. Then, after a few minutes grace, the clatter of horses' hoofs, and once again the jangle of the bell, and now she could hear the sound of voices come from the dining-hall below, and Harry's voice booming out above the others, and the barking of Duke and Duchess. It was nearly dark, the garden was in shadow outside her window, and the trees were still. Down there in the woods, she thought, that sentinel is standing, peering down towards the creek, and perhaps he has been joined now by others, and they are all waiting there, with their backs to the trees, in silence, until we have finished our supper here in the house, and Eustick looks across at Godolphin, and Godolphin at Harry, and Harry at Rockingham, and then they will push back their chairs and smile at one another, and fingering their swords, go down into the woods. And if this were a hundred years ago, she thought, I would be prepared for this, and there would be sleeping draughts to put into their wine, or I would have sold myself to the devil and placed them under a spell, but it is not a hundred years ago, it is my own time, and such things do not happen any more, and all I can do is to sit at the table and smile upon them, and encourage them to drink.

She opened her door, and the sound of their voices rose from the dining-hall. There were the pompous tones of Godolphin, and that scratchy querulous cough of Philip Rashleigh, and a question from Rockingham, silken and smooth. She turned along the corridor to the children's room before descending, and kissed them as they slept, pulling aside the curtain so that the cool night air should come to them from the open casement, and then, as she walked once more to the head of the stairs, she heard a sound behind her, slow and dragging, as though someone, uncertain of his way in the darkness, shuffled in the passage.

"Who is there?" she whispered, and there was no answer. She waited a moment, a chill of fear upon her, while the loud voices of the guests came from below, and then once again there was the dragging shuffling sound in the dark passage, and a faint whisper, and a sigh.

She brought a candle from the children's room, and holding it high above her head, looked down into the long corridor whence the sound had come, and there, half-crouching, half-lying against the wall, was William, his face ashen pale, his left arm hanging useless at his side. She knelt down beside him, but he pushed her back, his small button mouth twisted with pain. "Don't touch me, my lady," he whispered, "you will soil your gown, there is blood on my sleeve."

"William, dear William, are you badly hurt?" she said, and he shook his head, his right hand clasping his shoulder.

"It is nothing, my lady," he said, "only somewhat unfortunate… to-night of all nights." And he closed his eyes, weak with pain, and she knew he was lying to her.

"How did it happen?" she asked.

"Coming back through the woods, my lady," he said, "I saw one of Lord Godolphin's men, and he challenged me. I managed to evade him, but received this scratch."

"You shall come to my room, and I will bathe your wound, and bind it for you," she whispered, and because he was barely conscious now, he protested no longer, but suffered her to lead him along the passage to her room, and once there she closed the door and bolted it, and helped him to her bed. Then she brought water and a towel, and in some fashion cleansed the cut in his shoulder, and bound it for him, and he turned his eyes up to her and said, "My lady, you should not do this for me," and "Lie still," she whispered, "lie still and rest."

His face was deadly white still, and she, knowing little of the depth of the wound or what she could do to ease his pain, felt helpless suddenly, and despairing, and he must have sensed it for he said, "Do not worry, my lady, I shall be all right. And at least my mission was successful, I went to La Mouette and saw my master."

"You told him?" she asked. "You told him that Godolphin, and Eustick, and the others were supping here tonight?"

"Yes, my lady, and he smiled in that way of his, my lady, and he said to me, 'Tell your mistress I am in no way disturbed, and that La Mouette has need of a cabin-boy.' " As William spoke there was a footstep outside, and someone knocked at the door. "Who is there?" called Dona, and the voice of the little maid-servant answered, "Sir Harry sends word to your ladyship, that he and the gentlemen are awaiting supper."

"Tell Sir Harry to start, I will be with them directly," said Dona, and bending down again to William she whispered, "And the ship herself, is all well with the ship, and will she sail to-night?" But he stared back at her now without recognition, and then closed his eyes, and she saw that he had fainted.

She covered him with her blankets, scarcely knowing what she did, and washed the blood from her hands in the water, and then, glancing in the mirror and seeing that the colour had drained away from her face too, she dabbed rouge high on her cheek-bones with unsteady fingers. Then she left her room, leaving William unconscious on her bed, and walking down the stairs into the dining-hall she heard the scraping of the chairs on the stone floor as the guests rose to their feet and waited for her. She held her head high in the air, and there was a smile on her lips, but she saw nothing, not the blaze of the candles, nor the long table piled with dishes, nor Godolphin in his plum-coloured coat, nor Rashleigh with his grey wig, nor Eustick fingering his sword, not all the eyes of the men who stared at her and bowed low as she passed to her seat at the head of the table, but only one man, who stood on the deck of his ship in the silent creek, saying farewell to her in thought as he waited for the tide.

Chapter XVIII

So, FOR THE FIRST TIME for many years, there was a banquet in the great dining-hall of Navron House. The candles shone down upon the guests as they sat shoulder to shoulder, six a side, at the long table, and the table itself was splendid with silver and rose-bordered plate and large bowls piled high with fruit. At one end the host, blue-eyed and flushed, his blond wig a little askew, laughed a shade too loudly and too long at every jest that passed. At the other end the hostess toyed with the dishes set before her, cool, unperturbed, throwing glances now and again at the guests beside her as though he on her right hand and he on her left were the only men who mattered in the world, she was theirs for this evening, or longer if they so desired. Never before, thought Harry St. Columb, kicking at one of the dogs under the table, never before had Dona flirted so blatantly, made eyes so outrageously. If this was the result of that confounded fever, God help all the fellows present. Never before, thought Rockingham, watching her across the table, never before had Dona looked so provocative; what was passing through her head that moment, and why had she walked through the woods towards the river at seven o'clock that evening, when he had thought her asleep in her bed?

And this, thought every guest who sat at her table, this is the famous Lady St. Columb, of whom, from time to time, we hear so much gossip, so much scandal; who sups in London taverns with the ladies of the town, who rides bareback in the streets at midnight in her husband's breeches, who has given something of herself, no doubt, to every philanderer at St. James's, not to mention His Majesty himself.

So at first the guests were suspicious, inarticulate, and shy, but when she talked, and looked across at them with a word and a smile, and asked them about their homes, their hobbies and pursuits, and who was married and who was not, and gave them, in turn, to understand that every word they uttered had importance to her, had charm, and that given the opportunity she would understand them as they had never been understood before, then they relaxed, then they melted, and to hell, thought young Penrose, with all the people who have maligned her, the jealous chit-chat of plain women of course, and God's truth, what a wife to have and to keep, thought Eustick, under lock and key, and never let out of your sight. There was Tremayne from beyond Probus, and red-wigged Carnethick who owned all the land on the west coast, and the first had no wife, and no mistress and so watched her dumbly, in sulky adoration, and the second had a wife ten years older than himself, and wondered, when Dona flashed him a glance across the table, whether there was any possibility of seeing her alone, later, when supper was over. Even Godolphin the pompous, Godolphin with his protruding eyes and his bulbous nose, admitted to himself, somewhat grudgingly, that Harry's wife had charm, although of course he did not approve of her and never would, and somehow he could not see Lucy taking to her as a companion, there was something bold about her eyes that made him feel uncomfortable. Philip Rashleigh, always taciturn with women, always gruff and silent, suddenly began to tell her about his boyhood, and how fond he had been of his mother, who had died when he was ten, "And it's now nearly eleven o'clock," thought Dona, "and we are still eating, and drinking, and talking, and if I can go on like this, even for a little longer, it will give him time down there in the creek, for the tide must be making all the while, and no matter whether La Mouette has a gap in her hull or not, what repairs they have done to her must hold, and the ship must sail."