"Yes, dear," he said tenderly, soberly. "We are ready for the sea."

"God be with us," she said wistfully.



CHAPTER V

MR. AND MISS RIDGE SAIL FOR MANILA

London. A thick fog, and the elopers on board the _Tempest Queen_, one
of the fastest and most palatial of the liners which ply between England
and the Far East, and for ten years under the command of Captain
Shadburn, formerly of the British Navy. For the elopement was now an
established fact, and Hugh, looking back on their Atlantic voyage, hoped
that in this new ship fortune would be more propitious.

Excitement, an exaggerated dread of being followed by detectives,
together with seasickness, had been too much for Grace, and all those
weary days she had scarcely left her stateroom. Alone in her bunk,
ticketed to the other side of the world, running away from nothing but a
foolish aversion, the girl had felt her heart grow cold with a nameless
dread, a clammy fear that she had undertaken something that she could
not accomplish. Almost hourly each day of that unending voyage, Hugh
would knock at her door and beg to be allowed to do something to
alleviate her sufferings; then a thrill of new tenderness would dart
into her soul as she thought of her champion for all time.

And Hugh. Never had time seemed such an eternity. Do what he would, he
could not escape the Nemesis-like conviction that he had led the girl he