"There, one more kiss from those ripe red lips, and then--" _Spank_! As sharp a backhanded blow across the face as ever man received from an angry woman, and then, as the recipient involuntarily started back, Mary Dell flung the golden pieces at him, so that one struck him in the chest and the others flew tinkling across the room. "Curse you!" cried the captain, in a low, savage voice, "this is too much. Leave this house, you low-bred shrew, and if you ever dare to come here again--" "Dare!" cried the woman as fiercely. "I dare anything. I've not been a sailor's child for nothing. And so you think that a woman's love is to be bought and sold for a few paltry guineas, and that you can play with and throw me off as you please. Look here, James Armstrong, I wouldn't marry you now if you prayed me to be your wife--wife to such a cruel, mean coward! Faugh! I would sooner leap overboard some night and die in the deepest part of the harbour." "Leave this house, you vixen." "Not at your bidding, captain," cried the girl, scornfully. "Captain! Why, the commonest sailor in the king's ships would shame to behave to a woman as you have behaved to me. But I warn you," she continued, as in her excitement her luxuriant glossy black hair escaped from its comb and fell rippling down in masses--"I warn you, that if you go to church with that lady, who cannot know you as I do, I'll never forgive you, but have such a revenge as shall make you rue the day that you were born." "Silence, woman; I've borne enough! Leave this house!" "You thought because I was fatherless and motherless that I should be an easy prey; but you were wrong, Captain Armstrong; you were wrong. I am a woman, but not the weak, helpless thing you believed." "Leave my house!" "When I have told you all I think and feel, James Armstrong." "Leave my house, woman!" "Do you think you can frighten me by your loud voice and threatening looks?" said the girl, scornfully. "Leave my house!" cried the Captain for the third time, furiously; and, glancing through the window as he spoke, he changed colour at the sight of a grey-haired gentleman approaching with a tall, graceful woman upon his arm. "Ah!" cried Mary Dell, as she read his excitement aright; "so that is the woman! Then I'll stop and meet her face to face, and tell her what a contemptible creature she is going to wed." "Curse you, leave this house!" cried the captain in a savage whisper; and catching his visitor roughly by the shoulder, he tried to pull her towards the door; but the girl resisted, and in the struggle a chair was overturned with a crash, the door was flung open, and a bluff, manly voice exclaimed-- "Why, hullo! what's the matter now?"