One or two questions of no moment had been asked and answered when the Admiral exclaimed: "I beg, dearest madam, and you, Captain Acton, will forgive me for perhaps unseasonably thrusting in, by asking if you can tell me that atrocious, and to me heartbreaking as has been the conduct of my son, he acted nevertheless during his relations with you on board the _Minorca_ as a gentleman?" "He did. I can assure you on my word of honour, Sir William," answered the girl, with a glow and fervour that caused her father to again attentively examine her face with an expression which changed the look it was wearing. "In my feigned madness I reproached him in language which I knew was not ladylike. I called him a scoundrel, and a rogue, and many injurious and aggravating words which came into my head I flung at him, acting all the while the part of a madwoman. Yet, sir," she said, turning to her father, "never once did my violent attacks upon his temper and character cause him to forget himself. He bowed to me, he madamed me, he was throughout as gentlemanlike and respectful as I had ever found him when we met at Old Harbour House or in Old Harbour Town." The Admiral put his hand upon her's. "I thank you for this gracious assurance," he said, in a voice deep with feeling, with eyes which looked humid as they reposed upon her, and with a faint smile like the first illumination of the face by a dawning happiness. "Did you act the part of a madwoman?" said Captain Acton. "Yes, papa. When I found myself his prisoner and at his mercy I quickly thought over what I should do to rescue myself. I understood, first of all, that I must disgust him if possible." Captain Acton and Sir William exchanged a look at this stroke of _naiveté_ and lightly smiled. "How was I to disgust him?" continued the beautiful young creature. "I made up my mind to pretend to be mad." "And you are so fine an actress as to have been able to persuade so intelligent a man that you were actually mad?" enquired Captain Acton with some astonishment. "I was determined to try. I could see no other way of frightening and disgusting him." "The spirit of her mother came to her aid," said the Admiral, who had heard much of the genius of Kitty O'Hara. "Ha!" exclaimed Captain Acton, looking fondly at his child, "I don't doubt it is in you. But you have suffered it to rest as an unsuspected quality." "And you made Mr Lawrence afraid of you?" said Sir William. She answered by relating the story of some of those freaks with which the reader has been made acquainted; she described other acts of madness which had taxed her imagination to devise. She was mad to all who spoke to her because, as she justly said, "it would have been ridiculous for me to have been mad to the Captain and sane to everybody else in the ship."