Before they were out of sight of St. Nicholas they were good friends, and his lordship was beginning to correct his first impressions of her and to discover the charm of that frank, straightforward attitude of comradeship which made her treat every man as a brother.  Considering how his mind was obsessed with the business of his mission, it is not wonderful that he should have come to talk to her of Captain Blood.  Indeed, there was a circumstance that directly led to it.

“I wonder now,” he said, as they were sauntering on the poop, “if you ever saw this fellow Blood, who was at one time on your uncle’s plantations as a slave.”

Miss Bishop halted.  She leaned upon the taffrail, looking out towards the receding land, and it was a moment before she answered in a steady, level voice: 

“I saw him often.  I knew him very well.”

“Ye don’t say!” His lordship was slightly moved out of an imperturbability that he had studiously cultivated.  He was a young man of perhaps eight-and-twenty, well above the middle height in stature and appearing taller by virtue of his exceeding leanness.  He had a thin, pale, rather pleasing hatchet-face, framed in the curls of a golden periwig, a sensitive mouth and pale blue eyes that lent his countenance a dreamy expression, a rather melancholy pensiveness.  But they were alert, observant eyes notwithstanding, although they failed on this occasion to observe the slight change of colour which his question had brought to Miss Bishop’s cheeks or the suspiciously excessive composure of her answer.

“Ye don’t say!” he repeated, and came to lean beside her.  “And what manner of man did you find him?”

“In those days I esteemed him for an unfortunate gentleman.”

“You were acquainted with his story?”

“He told it me.  That is why I esteemed him — for the calm fortitude with which he bore adversity.  Since then, considering what he has done, I have almost come to doubt if what he told me of himself was true.”

“If you mean of the wrongs he suffered at the hands of the Royal Commission that tried the Monmouth rebels, there’s little doubt that it would be true enough.  He was never out with Monmouth; that is certain.  He was convicted on a point of law of which he may well have been ignorant when he committed what was construed into treason.  But, faith, he’s had his revenge, after a fashion.”

“That,” she said in a small voice, “is the unforgivable thing.  It has destroyed him — deservedly.”

“Destroyed him?” His lordship laughed a little.  “Be none so sure of that.  He has grown rich, I hear.  He has translated, so it is said, his Spanish spoils into French gold, which is being treasured up for him in France.  His future father-in-law, M. d’Ogeron, has seen to that.”

“His future father-in-law?” said she, and stared at him round-eyed, with parted lips.  Then added:  “M. d’Ogeron?  The Governor of Tortuga?”