"Ha! yes, my niece Rosetta knows a scamp when she sees one. Confound you, sir!" and the admiral turned his back upon his shamefaced subordinate. He confronted Roscoria, and this time with a peculiar expression of malicious gratification under his rage. After all, when your next-door neighbor has run away with your niece, there is a unique joy in the thought of how he shall reap the whirlwind. Sir John put up his eye-glass and surveyed the husband of his niece from head to foot with a smile. "Well," said Roscoria, with an air of buoyant courtesy, which passed but poorly with his stammering, "I'm awfully sorry we have brought you so far after us--but--since you are here--would you?--may we request the honor?--we have ordered breakfast at the Red Lion." That was going too far. The admiral gave one of his snorts, grasped his cane, and absolutely shook it in the face of the speaker. In another instant there would have been a row royal, and the preliminary electric thrill went through the whole party. Lyndis stepped in. She softly removed Roscoria's protective hand from off her shoulder, and said with decision: "Let me speak to him, Louis." The men withdrew a little as she went across to the infuriated admiral, and said to him: "Sir John, dear, we do not want to defy you, and we never did. But indeed there was nothing to be said against the owner of Torres, except that he was poor. Was I also poor? Well, then, I was accustomed to a simple mode of life, and, bless my soul! that is all I have to fear; there is no starvation in the case. Perhaps I should have behaved differently; but, dear Sir John, am I not young? I loved him. And in any case, here I am, Roscoria's wife. My marriage cannot be overlooked; would it be seemly? Why not go home without any scandal, and be thankful that you are rid of a charge that I fear has been very troublesome to you. And you will go to the Red Lion first, will you not? and have some breakfast apart from us. Dear sir, think of Rosetta's feelings--and of my inextinguishable remorse--if you were to take a chill! Come, let me walk a piece of the way with you; the men will follow. That you should have come out on this rough sea so early in the morning! That is the only thing which shadows my happiness. I do not ask your forgiveness, but I _should_ like your portrait--the one in uniform, of course--you will send it me, will you not? Yes?" Lyndis bent her ruffled golden head and looked into his face with her sweet starry eyes. Now, the admiral had never been inaccessible to the wiles of lovely woman, and Lyndis had never before cared or dared to coax him. He began for the first time to see that there was something else in the girl beyond a fine figure. And thus it came that he put his hand furtively into his pocket and said, grumbling and awesome, but relenting: