re understand, Kate, that if you have
the reputation of an honest girl, I have that of a good sailor. The
name of Captain Stradling is favorably known upon two oceans, and it
will be to your credit, if ever, with your arm linked in mine, we walk
as man and wife, through any port of England or Scotland. I have said.
Now, look, reflect; if my proposition suits you, I will settle for
life on _terra firma_, and bid adieu to the sea; if not, I resume my
projected expedition, and it will be to you, Kate, that I shall say
adieu.'

Catherine opened her mouth to thank him, as was suitable, for his good
intentions.

'Do not reply to me!' interrupted he again; 'in three days I will come
to receive your decision.'

And he went out, leaving her amazed at having listened to so long a
speech from one, who until then, seated motionless in a distant corner
of the room, had always appeared to her the most rigid and silent of
seamen.

That very day Catherine has come to a decision concerning the captain;
she thinks him ugly and disagreeable, coarse and ignorant; he has
dared to tell her that she is thirty years old, and she will hardly be
so at St. Valentine's Day, which is six weeks ahead, at least. Besides
the scar which he has received from the celebrated Jean Bart, his
countenance has no beauty to boast of: his face is long and pale, his
temples are furrowed with wrinkles, and his lips thick and heavy; his
eyebrows, at the top of his forehead, seem to be lost in his hair; his
eyes are not mates, his nose is one-sided; his form is perhaps still
worse; he walks after the fashion of a duck. Fie! can such a man be a
suitable match for the rich landlady of the Royal Salmon, for the
beautiful Kitty; for her who, among so many admirers and lovers, has
had but the difficulty of a choice?

The next day towards nightfall, Catherine, seated in her bar, in the
large leathern arm-chair which served as her throne, with dreamy and
downcast brow, and chin resting on her hand, was still thinking of
Captain Stradling, but her ideas had assumed a different aspect from
those of the evening before.

She was saying to herself: 'If he has thick and heavy lips, it is
because he is an Englishman; if he walks like a duck, it is because he
is a sailor; if he has taken me to be thirty years old, that proves
simply that he is a good physiognomist, and I shall have one painful
avowal the less to make after marriage. As for his scar, he has a
thousand reas