Page:George Gibbs--Love of Monsieur.djvu/225



HEN the night had fallen again, Mistress Barbara Clerke went timorously upon the deck in search of Bras-de-Fer. His insensibility and brutality in turning away from her when she would have spoken to him in the cabin had tried her to the last extremity. But the thought of the duty she owed herself and him stifled the impulses of her spirit. And her pride, rebellious and insensate that the man who had so frankly sacrificed himself in London should care so little here, impelled her inevitably. Her fear of him was short-lived. In spite of all she knew to his discredit and the bloody guise in which she had found him, that look of humiliation and distress which she had brought into his face a night so long ago remained ineffaceably written upon her memory. It spoke 213