Chapter 21 - Page 2

hope?"

"Oh, no," she replied, with a very faint smile, taking his hand.

"It seems incredible that you are here," he began. "What a lucky man I am. Captain Kempt takes his yacht to rescue his son-in-law that is to be, and incidentally rescues me as well, and then to find you here! I suppose you came because your friend Miss Kempt was aboard?"

"Yes, we are all but inseparable."

"I wrote you a letter, Miss Amhurst, the last night I was in St. Petersburg in the summer."

"Yes, I received it."

"No, not this one. It was the night I was captured, and I never got a chance to post it. It was an important letter-- for me."

"I thought it important-- for me," replied Dorothy, now smiling quite openly. "The Nihilists got it, searching your room after you had been arrested. It was sent on to New York, and given to me."

"Is that possible? How did they know it was for you?"

"I had been making inquiries through the Nihilists."

"I wrote you a proposal of marriage, Dorothy."

"It certainly read like it, but you see it wasn't signed, and you can't be held to it."

He reached across the table, and grasped her two hands.

"Dorothy, Dorothy," he cried, "do you mean you would have cabled 'Yes'?"

"No."

"You would not?"

"Of course not. I should have cabled 'Undecided.' One gets more for one's money in sending a long word. Then I should have written--" she paused, and he cried eagerly:

"What?"

"What do you think?" she asked.

"Well, do you know, Dorothy, I am beginning to think my incredible luck will hold, and that you'd have written 'Yes.'"

"I don't know about the luck: that would have been the answer."

He sprang up, bent over her, and she, quite unaffectedly raised her face to his.

"Oh, Dorothy," he cried.

"Oh, Alan," she replied, with quivering voice, "I never thought to see you again. You cannot imagine the long agony of this voyage, and not knowing what had happened."

"It's a blessing, Dorothy, you had learned nothing about the Trogzmondoff."

"Ah, but I did: that's what frightened me. We have a man on board who was flung for dead from that dreadful rock. The Baltic saved him; his mother, he calls it."

Drummond picked her up in his arms, and carried her to the luxurious divan which ran along the side of the large room. There they sat down together, out of sight of the stairway.

"Did you get all of my letters?"

"I think so."

"You know I am a poor man?"