“Why, no,” he cried; “not at all!  Who told you I was?  It is a deep gratification to me—­”

“To be exact,” proceeded the old man, with a vague fear still in his eyes, “I heard you were going to marry.”

“Marry!” This flaw took Peter’s sails even more unexpectedly than the other.  “Captain, who in the world—­who could have told—­”

“Are you?”

“No.”

“You aren’t?”

“Indeed, no!”

“I heard you were going to marry a negress here in town called Cissie Dildine.”  A question was audible in the silence that followed this statement.  The obscure emotion that charged all the old man’s queries affected Peter.

“I am not, Captain,” he declared earnestly; “that’s settled.”

“Oh—­you say it’s settled,” picked up the old lawyer, delicately.

“Yes.”

“Then you had thought of it?” Immediately, however, he corrected this breach of courtesy into which his old legal habit of cross-questioning had led him.  “Well, at any rate,” he said in quite another voice, “that eases my mind, Peter.  It eases my mind.  It was not only, Peter, the thought of losing you, but this girl you were thinking of marrying—­let me warn you, Peter—­she’s a negress.”

The mulatto stared at the strange objection.

“A negress!”

The old man paused and made that queer movement with his wrinkled lips as if he tasted some salty flavor.

“I—­I don’t mean exactly a—­a negress,” stammered the old gentleman; “I mean she’s not a—­a good girl, Peter; she’s a—­a thief, in fact—­she’s a thief—­a thief, Peter.  I couldn’t endure for you to marry a thief, Peter.”

It seemed to Peter Siner that some horrible compulsion kept the old Captain repeating over and over the fact that Cissie Dildine was a thief, a thief, a thief.  The word cut the very viscera in the brown man.  At last, when it seemed the old gentleman would never cease, Peter lifted a hand.

“Yes, yes,” he gasped, with a sickly face, “I—­I’ve heard that before.”

He drew a shaken breath and moistened his lips.  The two stood looking at each other, each profoundly at a loss as to what the other meant.  Old Captain Renfrew collected himself first.

“That is all, Peter.”  He tried to lighten his tones.  “I think I’ll get to work.  Let me see, where do I keep my manuscript?”

Peter pointed mechanically at a drawer as he walked out at the library door.  Once outside, he ran to the front piazza, then to the front gate, and with a racing heart stood looking up and down the sleepy thoroughfare.  The street was quite empty.

CHAPTER XI

Old Captain Renfrew was a trustful, credulous soul, as, indeed, most gentleman who lead a bachelor’s life are.  Such men lack that moral hardening and whetting which is obtained only amid the vicissitudes of a home; they are not actively and continuously engaged in the employment and detection of chicane; want of intimate association with a woman and some children begets in them a soft and simple way of believing what is said to them.  And their faith, easily raised, is just as easily shattered.  Their judgment lacks training.