“You lightly me, William, when you ask if I am jealous of--of Gillian.” “I do not comprehend,” murmured the governor, resuming his razor, but presently suspending it to demand with considerable energy,-- “You really mean, then, that as honest and Godfearing guardians of this child we should give her in marriage to this stranger?” “Yes, I do. When all is said, she is almost as much a stranger as he, and I know not why they should not suit each other well.” “So be it. I will tell the man, and do you speak as a mother should to the maid. ’Tis not like you, Alice, to be bitter.” “I shall not love her the better, if you are to chide me on her account, Will.” “Nay, chide thee, sweetheart! ’Twould ill befit me to chide the better half of mine own life.” So the suitor received permission to woo his bride openly, and Gillian presently so shone with jewels, and so rustled about in gorgeous raiment, that matrons and maids suspended their work to run to the doors and watch her as she passed by. CHAPTER XXXIV. THE HILT OF A RAPIER. “Voysye! Hold on, man! Here, come along back!” “Belay your jaw, you landlubber! I’m bound to overhaul that clipper before she gets away! Cast off your grapnel, or”-- And twisting his arm away from Francis Billington, with whom he had been drinking until both men had had more than enough, Richard Voysye, seaman of the Golden Fleece, set out to overtake the female figure which had just flitted past them in the twilight. Billington, not so tipsy as the sailor, lunged forward in pursuit, and once more grasping his arm exclaimed,-- “’Tis the young dame your captain is going to marry, I tell you, and ’twill go hard with the man that affronts her”-- “Hang the captain, and you too! There, then, you fool--take that!” Delivering, as he spoke, a cruel blow in the face of his opponent, Voysye felled him to the ground, and pursuing Gillian, who hearing the scuffle had paused to look behind her, threw a rude arm around her waist, crying,-- “Come, now, I’ll have one kiss, if I die for’t.” But Gillian, lithe as a cat, struggled and fought after her kind, so successfully that the ruffian had not been able to snatch his kiss before a heavy foot reached him with a kick, and a furious voice roared in his ear,-- “Avast there, you”--but the epithets are not writable, and in these days no man, however angry, would use them in a woman’s presence. They were, however, effectual, for with an oath quite as furious and quite as unmentionable, Voysye quitted his hold upon the girl’s waist and, turning, aimed at Cromwell’s face a buffet which, however, only reached his shoulder. Angered, not so much at the assault as the insubordination, the captain seized his sheathed rapier, and dealt with the hilt a blow upon the sailor’s head which prostrated him, bleeding and senseless, at Gillian’s feet. “You’ve killed him, and they’ll hang you for murder!” cried she. “Hide him, and get away with your vessels before it’s found out.”