“I am not addicted to abandoning any thing, Sir to which my title is just and legal.  But you speak in enigmas.  If you are acquainted with the place where my niece is secreted, avow it frankly, and permit me to take those measures which the case requires.”

Ludlow reddened to his forehead, and he struggled powerfully with his pride and his regrets.

“It is useless to attempt concealing the step which Alida Barberie has been pleased to take,” he said, a smile so bitter passing over his features, as to lend them the expression of severe mockery; “she has chosen more worthily than either of us could have believed; she has found a companion more suited to her station, her character, and her sex, than Van Staats of Kinderhook, or a poor commander of a Queen’s ship!”

“Cruisers and manors!  What in the name of mysteries is thy meaning?  The girl is not here; you declare she is not on board of the Coquette, and there remains only——­”

“The brigantine!” groaned the young sailor uttering the word by a violent effort of the will.

“The brigantine!” repeated the Alderman, slowly “My niece can have nothing to do aboard a dealer in contraband.  That is to say, Alida Barberie is not a trader.”

“Alderman Van Beverout, if we wish to escape the contamination of vice, its society must be avoided.  There was one in the pavilion, of a mien and assurance the past night, that might delude an angel.  Ah! woman! woman! thy mind is composed of vanities, and thy imagination is thy bitterest foe!”

“Women and vanities!” echoed the amazed burgher.  “My niece, the heiress of old Etienne Marie de Barberie, and the sought of so many of honorable names and respectable professions, to be a refugee with a rover!—­always supposing your opinions of the character of the brigantine to be just.  This is a conjecture too improbable to be true.”

“The eye of a lover, Sir, may be keener than that of a guardian—­call it jealousy, if you will,—­would to Heaven my suspicions were untrue!—­but if she be not there, where is she?”

The opinion of the Alderman seemed staggered.  If la belle Barberie had not yielded to the fascinations of that wayward, but seductive, eye and smile, to that singular beauty of face, and to the secret and often irresistible charm that encircles eminent personal attractions, when aided by mystery, to what had she yielded, and whither had she fled?

These were reflections that now began to pass through the thoughts of the Alderman, as they had already planted stings in the bosom of Ludlow.  With reflection, conviction began slowly to assert its power.  But the truth did not gleam upon the mind of the calculating and wary merchant, with the same instinctive readiness that it had flashed upon the jealous faculties of the lover.  He pondered on each circumstance of the interview between the dealer in contraband and his niece; recalled the manner and discourse of the former; drew certain general and vague conjectures concerning the power which novelty, when coupled with circumstances of romance, might exercise over a female fancy; and dwelt long and secretly on some important facts that were alone known to himself,—­before his judgment finally settled down into the same opinion, as that which his companion had formed, with all the sensitiveness of jealous alarm.