All on a sudden and when the silence that followed had not lasted ten seconds, she sprang to her feet with a shriek; she dashed her hands to her face, she rushed as though pursued to the other end of the cabin, and there crouched with her face to the bulkhead, hidden in her hands; and thus she stood rocking herself sideways, moaning: "Why am I not sent home? Why am I here a prisoner? What will my father think has become of me? Home, home, home! In the hands of a man that dare rob his employer! At the mercy of one who of all Captain Acton's friends and acquaintances should feel the most deeply obliged to him." She wheeled round and out of her incommunicable attitude and language of distress, and said, looking at him vacantly with a cold, pale smile: "Are you Mr Lawrence, the son of Sir William Lawrence, Captain Acton's friend?" "You know, madam, that I am," he answered, bowing with graceful suavity, and with a light smile that was like saying, "I understand the import of your tactics, and am willing to wait and watch you." "I know, sir," she exclaimed with the vehement indignation and contempt conveyed by that perfection of art which conceals art and which is a gift of intuition beyond the reach of those not born with it, "that Sir William Lawrence has a son, and that he was dismissed from the Navy for a brutal, drunken outrage of which he alone, of all the gentlemen and officers in the Service, was capable." He coloured brightly at this, and his frown was as though a shadow had come between him and the light that revealed his face.