Ludlow had watched the speakers in silence.  The manner of Alida was far less embarrassed, than when he had before seen her in the smuggler’s company; and his blood fired, when he saw that their eyes met with a secret and friendly intelligence.  He had remained, however, with a resolution to be calm, and to know the worst.  Conquering the expression of his feelings by a great effort, he answered with an exterior of composure, though not without some of that bitterness in his emphasis, which he felt at his heart.

“If Master Seadrift has this knowledge, he may value himself on his good fortune;” was the reply.

“Much intercourse with the sex, who are my best customers, has something helped me;” returned the cavalier dealer in contraband.  “Here is a brocade, whose fellow is worn openly in the presence of our royal mistress, though it came from the forbidden looms of Italy; and the ladies of the court return from patriotically dancing, in the fabrics of home, to please the public eye, once in the year, to wear these more agreeable inventions, all the rest of it, to please themselves.  Tell me, why does the Englishman, with his pale sun, spend thousands to force a sickly imitation of the gifts of the tropics, but because he pines for forbidden fruit? or why does your Paris gourmand roll a fig on his tongue, that a Lazzarone of Naples would cast into his bay, but because he wishes to enjoy the bounties of a low latitude, under a watery sky?  I have seen an individual feast on the eau sucre of an European pine, that cost a guinea, while his palate would have refused the same fruit, with its delicious compound of acid and sweet, mellowed to ripeness under a burning sun, merely because he could have it for nothing.  This is the secret of our patronage; and as the sex are most liable to its influence, we owe them most gratitude.”

“You have travelled, Master Seadrift,” returned la Belle smiling, while she tossed the rich contents of the bale on the carpet, “and treat of usages as familiarly as you speak of dignities.”

“The lady of the sea-green mantle does not permit an idle servant.  We follow the direction of her guiding hand; sometimes it points our course among the isles of the Adriatic, and at others on your stormy American coasts.  There is little of Europe between Gibraltar and the Cattegat, that I have not visited.”

“But Italy has been the favorite, if one may judge by the number of her fabrics that you produce.”

“Italy, France, and Flanders, divide my custom; though you are right, in believing the former most in favor.  Many years of early life did I pass on the noble coasts of that romantic region.  One who protected and guided my infancy and youth, even left me for a time, under instruction, on the little plain of Sorrento.”

“And where can this plain be found?—­for the residence of so famous a rover may, one day, become the theme of song, and is likely to occupy the leisure of the curious.”