’The longer we do not hear, the more certain I am of their being at Leghorn,’ said Venetia.

‘I have a great mind to travel there to-night,’ said Lady Annabel.

As they were stepping into the portico, Venetia recognised Captain Cadurcis in the distance.  She turned pale; she would have fallen had she not leaned on her mother, who was not so advanced, and who had not seen him.

‘What is the matter, Venetia!’ said Lady Annabel, alarmed.

‘He is here, he is here!’

‘Marmion?’

‘No, George.  Let me sit down.’

Her mother tried to support her to a chair.  Lady Annabel took off her bonnet.  She had not strength to walk forth.  She could not speak.  She sat down opposite Venetia, and her countenance pictured distress to so painful a degree, that at any other time Venetia would have flown to her, but in this crisis of suspense it was impossible.  George was in sight; he was in the portico; he was in the room.

He looked wan, haggard, and distracted.  More than once he essayed to speak, but failed.

Lady Annabel looked at him with a strange, delirious expression.  Venetia rushed forward and seized his arm, and gazed intently on his face.  He shrank from her glance; his frame trembled.

CHAPTER XII.

In the heart of the tempest Captain Cadurcis traced his way in a sea of vapour with extreme danger and difficulty to the shore.  On his arrival at Spezzia, however, scarcely a house was visible, and the only evidence of the situation of the place was the cessation of an immense white surf which otherwise indicated the line of the sea, but the absence of which proved his contiguity to a harbour.  In the thick fog he heard the cries and shouts of the returning fishermen, and of their wives and children responding from the land to their exclamations.  He was forced, therefore, to wait at Spezzia, in an agony of impotent suspense, until the fury of the storm was over and the sky was partially cleared.  At length the objects became gradually less obscure; he could trace the outline of the houses, and catch a glimpse of the water half a mile out, and soon the old castles which guard the entrance of the strait that leads into the gulf, looming in the distance, and now and then a group of human beings in the vanishing vapour.  Of these he made some inquiries, but in vain, respecting the boat and his friends.  He then made the brig, but could learn nothing except their departure in the morning.  He at length obtained a horse and galloped along the coast towards Lerici, keeping a sharp look out as he proceeded and stopping at every village in his progress for intelligence.  When he had arrived in the course of three hours at Lerici, the storm had abated, the sky was clear, and no evidence of the recent squall remained except the agitated state of the waves.  At Lerici he could hear nothing, so he hurried on to Sarzana, where he learnt for the