“Yes, I had forgotten that your sex is often as timorous as it is fair,” he added, with a smile so insinuating and gentle, that the governess cast an involuntary and uneasy glance towards her charge, “or I might have been earlier with my assurance of safety.”

“It is welcome even now.”

“And your young and gentle friend,” he continued, bowing openly to Gertrude, though he still addressed his words to the governess; “her slumbers will not be the heavier for what has passed.”

“The innocent seldom find an uneasy pillow.”

“There is a holy and unsearchable mystery in that truth:  The innocent pillow their heads in quiet!  Would to God the guilty might find some refuge, too, against the sting of thought!  But we live in a world, and a time, when men cannot be sure even of themselves.”

He then paused, and looked about him, with a smile so haggard, that the anxious governess unconsciously drew nigher to her pupil, like one who sought, and was willing to yield, protection against the uncertain designs of a maniac.  Her visiter, however, remained in a silence so long and deep, that she felt the necessity of removing the awkward embarrassment of their situation, by speaking herself.

“Do you find Mr Wilder as much inclined to mercy as yourself?” she asked.  “There would be merit in his forbearance, since he appeared to be the particular object of the anger of the mutineers.”

“And yet you saw he was not without his friends.  You witnessed the devotion of the men who stood forth in his behalf?”

“I did:  and find it remarkable that he should have been able, in so short a time, to conquer thus completely two so stubborn natures.”

“Four-and-twenty years make not an acquaintance of a day!”

“And does their friendship bear so old a date?”

“I have heard that time counted between them.  It is very certain the youth is bound to those uncouth companions of his by some extraordinary tie.  Perhaps this is not the first of their services.”

Mrs Wyllys looked grieved.  Although prepared to believe that Wilder was a secret agent of the Rover, she had endeavoured to hope his connexion with the freebooters was susceptible of some explanation more favourable to his character.  However he might be implicated in the common guilt of those who pursued the hazards of the reckless fortunes of that proscribed ship, it was evident he bore a heart too generous to wish to see her, and her young and guileless charge, the victims of the licentiousness of his associates.  His repeated and mysterious warnings no longer needed explanation.  Indeed, all that had been dark and inexplicable, both in the previous and unaccountable glimmerings of her own mind, and in the extraordinary conduct of the inmates of the ship, was at each instant becoming capable of solution.  She now remembered, in the person and countenance of the Rover, the form and features of the individual who had spoken the passing