Now they had reached French ground, and were free, but it was too
late! That was why Mr. Bruce roamed so wildly to-night over the Calais
sands, tortured by a cruel fear that he might lose the treasure of his
heart for ever; exaggerating, in that supreme moment of anxiety, her
sufferings, her danger, perhaps even her priceless value to himself.

To do him justice, he did not think for an instant of the many galling
annoyances to which both must be subjected hereafter in the event of
her coming safely through her trial. He found no time to reflect on a
censorious world, an outraged circle of friends, an infuriated family;
on the cold shoulder Mrs. Grundy would turn upon his darling, and the
fair mark he would himself be bound to offer that grim old father, who
had served under Wellington, or that soft-spoken dandy brother in
the Guards, unerring at "rocketers," and deadly for all ground
game, neither of whom would probably shoot the wider, under the
circumstances that he, the offender, felt in honour he must stand at
least one discharge without retaliation, an arrangement which makes
twelve paces uncomfortably close quarters for the passive and
immovable target. He scarcely dwelt a moment on the bitter scorn with
which his own great-uncle, whose natural heir he was, would calmly and
deliberately curse this piece of childish folly, while he disinherited
its perpetrator without scruple or remorse. He never even considered
the disadvantage under which a life that ought to be very dear to him
was now opening on the world: a life that might be blighted through
its whole course by his own folly, punished, a score of years hence,
for unwittingly arriving a few weeks too soon. No! He could think
of nothing but Nina's anguish and Nina's danger; could only wander
helplessly backwards and forwards, stupefied by the continuous gusts
of that boisterous sea-wind, stunned by the dull wash of the incoming