The speech, the very words, the very gesture, the very modulations of the voice--where had she heard them before? A hurried winging of thought brought the swaying of colored lanterns--a garden--a graveled walk--a perfumed night; and while she still looked in wonder, a boisterous puff of wind flared up the torch on the mast and tossed his wide-brimmed hat back upon his head so that she saw a scar upon his temple. She peered straight forward and he turned his head in vain. “Good God!” she cried. “This! Is it this?” It was too late to continue the concealment, had he wished to do so. Then, while he in turn was peering at her, startled at the lively expression of horror in her eyes--a horror at his condition and plainly not at himself--she covered her face with her fingers and bowed her head into them, not shrinkingly in loathing as he might have expected from the woman he had left in London, but in an anguish as of penitence, the impotence of a child at the reproof of an angry parent, in contrition, remorse, or humiliation. He could not understand. But, straightening himself with a stern dignity, which sat well upon him, he replied in a tone so low that its vibrant note barely reached her ears. “This, madame, ... even this.” When she looked up at him again it was with clear, level, unflinching eyes. “Monsieur--” she began, haltingly. But he held up his hand. “I had hoped to have withdrawn ere this upon my own ship and to have left you.” “Thank God that you did not. I would atone to you for many things. Could you have deserted us? You owe me a greater debt of humiliation and abasement than you can ever hope to pay. But would you abandon us to that crew of demons below! Ah,” she shuddered; “it is a vengeance worthy of the name.” “Madame, the sparks of such hatred as that you bear for me are best unfed to flame. You shall be adequately guarded upon the _San Isidro_. But before dawn I and my ship will have sailed--” “No, no,” she broke in. “You must not. You cannot leave--” The woman in her rebelled at the thought that he could find it possible to do what he promised. “_Must_ and _can_ are strong words.” He smiled coldly. “There is no _must_ or _can_ upon the _San Isidro_ but mine. The _convenances_ of St. James’s Square are not those of the Spanish Main, madame.” But the evil she had wrought in this man’s life, though she had wrought it unconsciously, gave her a new humility. She had done and dared much already. She would not go back. “I pray you, monsieur, in the name of that mother you once swore by--in the name of all the things you hold most holy--I pray that you will heed my prayer. Take, at least, the Señorita de Batteville upon your vessel. Take us from the faces of the men at the cabin door who leer and grin at us with a too horrid import.” A frown crossed the Frenchman’s features. “These men will be upon the _Saucy Sally_.” “But you, monsieur, will be there--you will not permit--”