“It’s what you deserve.”

“Oh, and why, if you please?”

“For speaking to him as you did.”

“I usually call things by their names.”

“Do you?  Stab me!  I shouldn’t boast of it.  It argues either extreme youth or extreme foolishness.”  His lordship, you see, belonged to my Lord Sunderland’s school of philosophy.  He added after a moment:  “So does the display of ingratitude.”

A faint colour stirred in her cheeks.  “Your lordship is evidently aggrieved with me.  I am disconsolate.  I hope your lordship’s grievance is sounder than your views of life.  It is news to me that ingratitude is a fault only to be found in the young and the foolish.”

“I didn’t say so, ma’am.”  There was a tartness in his tone evoked by the tartness she had used.  “If you would do me the honour to listen, you would not misapprehend me.  For if unlike you I do not always say precisely what I think, at least I say precisely what I wish to convey.  To be ungrateful may be human; but to display it is childish.”

“I...  I don’t think I understand.”  Her brows were knit.  “How have I been ungrateful and to whom?”

“To whom?  To Captain Blood.  Didn’t he come to our rescue?”

“Did he?” Her manner was frigid.  “I wasn’t aware that he knew of our presence aboard the Milagrosa.”

His lordship permitted himself the slightest gesture of impatience.

“You are probably aware that he delivered us,” said he.  “And living as you have done in these savage places of the world, you can hardly fail to be aware of what is known even in England:  that this fellow Blood strictly confines himself to making war upon the Spaniards.  So that to call him thief and pirate as you did was to overstate the case against him at a time when it would have been more prudent to have understated it.”

“Prudence?” Her voice was scornful.  “What have I to do with prudence?”

“Nothing — as I perceive.  But, at least, study generosity.  I tell you frankly, ma’am, that in Blood’s place I should never have been so nice.  Sink me!  When you consider what he has suffered at the hands of his fellow-countrymen, you may marvel with me that he should trouble to discriminate between Spanish and English.  To be sold into slavery!  Ugh!” His lordship shuddered.  “And to a damned colonial planter!” He checked abruptly.  “I beg your pardon, Miss Bishop.  For the moment....”

“You were carried away by your heat in defence of this... sea-robber.”  Miss Bishop’s scorn was almost fierce.

His lordship stared at her again.  Then he half-closed his large, pale eyes, and tilted his head a little.  “I wonder why you hate him so,” he said softly.

He saw the sudden scarlet flame upon her cheeks, the heavy frown that descended upon her brow.  He had made her very angry, he judged.  But there was no explosion.  She recovered.