The Captain was speaking to her, gently and soothingly, but her thoughts became more taken with the silence of La Boulaye than with the speech of Charlot.

Even in that parlous moment she had leisure to despise herself for having once--on the day on which, in answer to her intercessions, he had spared her brother's life--entertained a kindly, almost wistful, thought concerning this man whom she now deemed a dastard..