‘There is some truth in it,’ he answered, hoarsely.  ’Everybody in Cuba had a finger in the African trade, before your British philanthropy spoiled it.  Mr. Smithson made sixty thousand pounds in that line.  It was the foundation of his fortune.  And yet he had his misfortunes in running his cargo—­a ship burnt, a freight roasted alive.  There are some very black stories in Cuba against poor Smithson.  He will never go there again.’

’Mr. Smithson may be a scoundrel; indeed, I believe he is a pretty bad specimen in that line,’ said Lord Hartfield.  ’But I doubt if there is any story that can be told of him quite so bad as the history of your marriage, and the events that went before it.  I have been told the story of the beautiful Octoroon, who loved and trusted you, who shared your good and evil fortunes for the most desperate years of your life, was almost accepted as your wife, and whose strangled corpse was found in the harbour while the bells were ringing for your marriage with a rich planter’s heiress—­the lady who, no doubt, now patiently awaits your return to her native island.’

‘She will wait a long time,’ said Montesma, ’or fare ill if I go back to her.  Lesbia, his lordship’s story of the Octoroon is a fable—­an invention of my Cuban enemies, who hate us old Spaniards with a poisonous hatred.  But this much is true.  I am a married man—­bound, fettered by a tie which I abhor.  Our Havre marriage would have been bigamy on my part, a delusion on yours.  I could not have taken you to Cuba.  I had planned our life in a fairer, more civilised world.  I am rich enough to have surrounded you with all that makes life worth living.  I would have given you love as true and as deep as ever man gave to woman.  All that would have been wanting would have been the legality of the tie:  and as law never yet made a marriage happy which lacked the elements of bliss, our lawless union need not have missed happiness.  Lesbia, you said that you would hold by me, come what might.  The worst has come, love; but it leaves me not the less your true lover.’

She looked at him with wild despairing eyes, and then, with a hoarse strange cry, rushed from the cabin, and up the companion, with a desperate swiftness which seemed like the flight of a bird.  Montesma, Hartfield, Maulevrier, all followed her, heedless of everything except the dire necessity of arresting her flight.  Each in his own mind had divined her purpose.

They were not too late.  It was Hartfield’s strong arm that caught her, held her as in a vice, dragged her away from the edge of the deck, just where there was a space open to the waves.  Another instant and she would have flung herself overboard.  She fell back into Lord Hartfield’s arms, with a wild choking cry:  ‘Let me go!  Let me go!’ Another moment, and a flood of crimson stained his shirt-front, as she lay upon his breast, with closed eyelids and blood-bedabbled lips, in blessed unconsciousness.