ood carried her off when he
had disposed of his brother-buccaneer."

"And the dead man's followers allowed it?" He caught the note of
incredulity in her voice, but missed the note of relief with which it
was blent. "Oh, I don't believe the tale. I won't believe it!"

"I honour you for that, Miss Bishop. It strained my own belief that men
should be so callous, until this Cahusac afforded me the explanation."

"What?" She checked her unbelief, an unbelief that had uplifted her from
an inexplicable dismay. Clutching the rail, she swung round to face his
lordship with that question. Later he was to remember and perceive in
her present behaviour a certain oddness which went disregarded now.

"Blood purchased their consent, and his right to carry the girl off. He
paid them in pearls that were worth more than twenty thousand pieces of
eight." His lordship laughed again with a touch of contempt. "A handsome
price! Faith, they're scoundrels all--just thieving, venal curs. And
faith, it's a pretty tale this for a lady's ear."

She looked away from him again, and found that her sight was blurred.
After a moment in a voice less steady than before she asked him:

"Why should this Frenchman have told you such a tale? Did he hate this
Captain Blood?"

"I did not gather that," said his lordship slowly. "He related it... oh,
just as a commonplace, an instance of buccaneering ways.

"A commonplace!" said she. "My God! A commonplace!"

"I dare say that we are all savages under the cloak that civilization
fashions for us," said his lordship. "But this Blood, now, was a man
of considerable parts, from what else this Cahusac told me. He was a
bachelor of medicine."

"That is true, to my own knowledge."

"And he has seen much foreign service on sea and land. Cahusac
said--though this I hardly credit--that he had fought under de Ruyter."

"That also is true," said she. She sighed heavily. "Your Cahusac seems
to have been accurate enough. Alas!"

"You are sorry, then?"

She looked at him. She was very pale, he noticed.

"As we are sorry to hear of the death of one we have esteemed. Once I
held him in regard for an unfortunate but worthy gentleman. Now...."

She checked, and smiled a little crooked smile. "Such a man is best
forgotten."

And upon that she passed at once to speak of other things. The
friendship, which it was her great gift to command in all she met, grew
steadily between those two in the little time remaining,