“What you can find to amuse you in all this, Raoul, is more than I can discover.  Sir Brown, or sir anybody else, will send you again to those evil English prison-ships, of which you have so often told me; and there is surely nothing pleasant in that idea.”

“Bah! my sweet Ghita, Sir Brown, or Sir White, or Sir Black has not yet got me.  I am not a child, to tumble into the fire because the leading-strings are off; and le Feu-Follet shines or goes out, exactly as it suits her purposes.  The frigate, ten to one, will just run close in and take a near look, and then square away and go to Livorno, where there is much more to amuse her officers, than here in Porto Ferrajo.  This Sir Brown has his Ghita, as well as Raoul Yvard.”

“No, not a Ghita, I fear, Raoul,” answered the girl, smiling in spite of herself, while her color almost insensibly deepened—­“Livorno has few ignorant country girls, like me, who have been educated in a lone watch-tower on the coast.”

“Ghita,” answered Raoul, with feeling, “that poor lone watch-tower of thine might well be envied by many a noble dame at Roma and at Napoli; it has left thee innocent and pure—­a gem that gay capitals seldom contain; or, if found there, not in its native beauty, which they sully by use.”

“What know’st thou, Raoul, of Roma and Napoli, and of noble dames and rich gems?” asked the girl, smiling, the tenderness which had filled her heart at that moment betraying itself in her eyes.

“What do I know of such things, truly! why, I have been at both places, and have seen what I describe.  I went to Roma on purpose to see the Holy Father, in order to make certain whether our French opinions of his character and infallibility were true or not, before I set up in religion for myself.”

“And thou didst find him holy and venerable, Raoul,” interposed the girl, with earnestness and energy, for this was the great point of separation between them—­“I know thou found’st him thus, and worthy to be the head of an ancient and true church.  My eyes never beheld him; but this do I know to be true.”

Raoul was aware that the laxity of his religious opinions, opinions that he may be said to have inherited from his country, as it then existed morally, alone prevented Ghita from casting aside all other ties, and following his fortunes in weal and in woe.  Still he was too frank and generous to deceive, while he had ever been too considerate to strive to unsettle her confiding and consoling faith.  Her infirmity even, for so he deemed her notions to be, had a charm in his eyes; few men, however loose or sceptical in their own opinions on such matters, finding any pleasure in the contemplation of a female infidel; and he had never looked more fondly into her anxious but lovely face than he did at this very instant, making his reply with a truth that bordered on magnanimity.

“Thou art my religion, Ghita!” he said; “in thee I worship purity and holiness and—­”