She had something on her mind which she could best gain through Will, and being only a woman, and a woman of the South at that, she was well content to make him burn his fingers for the slight he had put upon her, no matter how unwitting he had been. "Tell me," she said, "why did you come under my window?" "I was a young fool." "Perhaps. But that does not explain everything." "I wanted an escapade. I am no better than other sailors. But their usual escapades of horseplay are not to my taste--I prefer fighting to that. Indeed, I did fight a few times as the alternative, till they grew tired of such serious jests." "Granted; but why was I honoured with supplying the victim?" "You were the only unmarried lady with whom I had had the honour of conversation." "Yes. But if you meant nothing by your serenading, any window would have done--some window in one of the palaces over the Marina, for instance. You were not, I think, staying at an inn, but on your ship?" "Yes." "And the Mont' alti Palace is far from the landing steps and not above-easy to find for a stranger." "Where there's a will there's a way." He was of course speaking in Italian to her, so that the appropriate play on his own name did not appear, nor had she sufficient English to understand it if he had given the proverb in English; but the truth of it struck home to me when he put it into English for me. "Assuredly, signor," she replied; "but why should there have been the will?" "Oh, I don't know." "You don't know? Can young English officers leave their ship at all times without question?" He shook his head. "You had leave?" "No." "You would then have had serious trouble had you been discovered by your captain?" "I suppose so." "You were not rowed ashore, I suppose, in that fine barge with the guard of honour assigned to you, as when you came to threaten our poor old Governor in the name of His Britannic Majesty?" "No, I was not." "Nor even in the very smallest of the ship's boats--officially?" "No." "And a watch is kept on English ships." "Certainly." "So that you could not take a speaking horn and halloa for a _barca_?" "No."