The old life in London, with its gaming, its carousing and gallantry--he could see it all through new eyes, washed clean and clear by the purging winds and storms of heaven. Himself he marked from a great moral distance, almost as though from another planet--the silly, spoiled child of folly that he had been. And it was this impotent creature who had cried out against his fate, which, with a rare honesty, had only lowered him from the high estate to which he had won, in accordance with the same inexorable regulations of the human law which had raised him there. The figures in that London life passed before him like a row of tawdry puppets, serving the same martyrdom to folly as himself, at the expense of love, charity, and all true virtue. Soft thinking for a powder-blackened, bearded _flibustier_, with hands even yet red from his last depredation! He smiled supinely to himself, that he could think thus of the things that so recently had been his very existence. In that London life, amid that throng of tinsel goddesses, one figure stood eminent and conspicuous. It was that of the woman who in all companies of men and women held her fame so fair that, whatever their reputations for high deeds or ignoble vices, none was so great as she. In that great court where virtue was a gem of so little worth that it was kept hid and secret, Mistress Barbara had worn it openly, broadly, high upon her brow, with a rare pride, as the most priceless of her inestimable jewels. He loved her. Flaunted, scorned, despised, he loved her the more. The past was engulfed and vanquished. He only saw her an actuality of the flesh here aboard his very ship--the dove in the eagle’s nest, whom every law and impulse, human and divine, impelled him to succor and protect. The vibrant voice, the gentle touch, the soft perfume of her presence provoked the covetous senses and stole away his will. It was with mingled feelings of apprehension and alarm that he discovered to himself the persistency of his attachment. He acknowledged it only when he learned that nothing else was possible. And when that was done he planned and resolved again, with a new fervency of determination. The future should atone. She had thought him a wild, reckless gallant, who had won his way and continued to win--by his wits--a worthless creature who consorted with the worst men of the court and presented in the world the characteristics she most despised. How he hated the thing that he had been, the mask that he had worn! If she had cared, she could have seen, she would have learned that he was not all that she had thought him. The reckless gallant was become a rough _boucanier_ and _pirato_. She had seen him in the red fever of battle. _Eh bien._ He would not undeceive her. Red-handed _pirato_ he would remain. No glimpse should she have of the struggle beneath. He would set her safe ashore at Port Royal. He would sail away from her forever, and she should enjoy her fortune.