e thrown into confusion by this lofty passion and
reasoning. Chill and narrow social conventions faded away before this
picture. All these things the old soldier felt, and saw no less how
impossible it was that his daughter should give up so wide a life, a
life so variously rich, filled to the full with such passionate love.
And Helene had tasted danger without shrinking; how could she return to
the pretty stage, the superficial circumscribed life of society?

It was the captain who broke the silence at last.

"Am I in the way?" he asked, looking at his wife.

"No," said the General, answering for her. "Helene has told me all. I
see that she is lost to us--"

"No," the captain put in quickly; "in a few years' time the statute of
limitations will allow me to go back to France. When the conscience
is clear, and a man has broken the law in obedience to----" he stopped
short, as if scorning to justify himself.

"How can you commit new murders, such as I have seen with my own eyes,
without remorse?"

"We had no provisions," the privateer captain retorted calmly.

"But if you had set the men ashore--"

"They would have given the alarm and sent a man-of-war after us, and we
should never have seen Chili again."

"Before France would have given warning to the Spanish admiralty--"
began the General.

"But France might take it amiss that a man, with a warrant still out
against him, should seize a brig chartered by Bordeaux merchants. And
for that matter, have you never fired a shot or so too many in battle?"

The General shrank under the other's eyes. He said no more, and his
daughter looked at him half sadly, half triumphant.

"General," the privateer continued, in a deep voice, "I have made it
a rule to abstract nothing from booty. But even so, my share will be
beyond a doubt far larger than your fortune. Permit me to return it to
you in another form--"

He drew a pile of banknotes from the piano, and without counting the
packets handed a million of francs to the Marquis.

"You can understand," he said, "that I cannot spend my time in watching
vessels pass by to Bordeaux. So unless the dangers of this Bohemian
life of ours have some attraction for you, unless you care to see South
America and the nights of the tropics, and a bit of fighting now and
again for the pleasure of helping to win a triumph for a young nation,
or for the name of Simon Bolivar, we must part. The long boat manned
with a trustworthy crew is