_, Patty! _chito_! Fie! _you_ sad? I like to see you saucy and
defiant. Let us not repent! So Joe has left you?"

"With cruel curses. My daughter hates me, he says, and means to be a
lady where I can't disgrace her. Oh, honey! to raise a child and have it
hate an' despise you goes hard, even if I have been bad. There's nothing
left me now but you, Van Dorn; oh, do not die!"

He coughed carefully, as if coughing was a luxury to be very mildly
exerted, and wiped a little blood from his tongue and lip.

"I'll try not to die till I comfort you some, _Marta delicioso_! The
ball is at my windpipe, and, when the blood trickles in, it makes me
cough, and I must beware of emotions, the surgeon says, lest it drop
into my lung and break a blood-vessel by some very spasmodic cough. So
do not be too beautiful or I might perish."

He stroked his long yellow mustache with the diamond-fingered hand, and
drew his velvet smoking-cap tight upon his silken curls, but he was too
pale to blush as formerly, though he lisped as much, like a modest boy.

"Captain," the woman said, pleased to crimson, "you are so much smarter
than me I'm afeard of you. Am I beautiful a little yet? Do I please you?
I know you mock me."

"_O hala hala!_" sighed Van Dorn. "You are the star of my life. All that
I am, you have made me. Patty, I worship you. When you are gone, human
nature will breathe and wonder. Do you remember when first we met?"

"A little, Captain. Tell it to me again. Praise me if you kin. I'm
almost desolate."

Her lip trembled, and she glanced at the fields across the way, she had
so long inhabited, where, as it seemed to her, more life than ever was
visible to-day, though she did not look carefully.

"How many years it has been, Patty, we will not tell. I was coming home
from Africa with an emigrant, a Briton, my capturer, indeed--that
officer in the blockading squadron on that coast who seized my
privateer, the _Ida_, with all her complement of Guinea slaves. His name
was all I took from him--you got the rest--_Van Dorn_!"

She stole a startled look at him out of her listening eyes, as if this
might be unpleasant talk, but he parried it with a compliment.

"_Chis! Dios!_ What a family of beauties you were! Betty, with her
hoyden air, and Jane, with her wealth of charms, and Patty, with her
bold, rich eyes and conquering will. We sailed into the Nanticoke by
mistake for the Manokin. My friend had pitied my misfortunes and liked
my