“Good-morning to ye, ma’am,” was his greeting as he overtook her; and hat in hand now, he added on a note of protest:  “Sure, it’s nothing less than uncharitable to make me run in this heat.”

“Why do you run, then?” she asked him coolly, standing slim and straight before him, all in white and very maidenly save in her unnatural composure.  “I am pressed,” she informed him.  “So you will forgive me if I do not stay.”

“You were none so pressed until I came,” he protested, and if his thin lips smiled, his blue eyes were oddly hard.

“Since you perceive it, sir, I wonder that you trouble to be so insistent.”

That crossed the swords between them, and it was against Blood’s instincts to avoid an engagement.

“Faith, you explain yourself after a fashion,” said he.  “But since it was more or less in your service that I donned the King’s coat, you should suffer it to cover the thief and pirate.”

She shrugged and turned aside, in some resentment and some regret.  Fearing to betray the latter, she took refuge in the former.  “I do my best,” said she.

“So that ye can be charitable in some ways!” He laughed softly.  “Glory be, now, I should be thankful for so much.  Maybe I’m presumptuous.  But I can’t forget that when I was no better than a slave in your uncle’s household in Barbados, ye used me with a certain kindness.”

“Why not?  In those days you had some claim upon my kindness.  You were just an unfortunate gentleman then.”

“And what else would you be calling me now?”

“Hardly unfortunate.  We have heard of your good fortune on the seas — how your luck has passed into a byword.  And we have heard other things:  of your good fortune in other directions.”

She spoke hastily, the thought of Mademoiselle d’Ogeron in her mind.  And instantly would have recalled the words had she been able.  But Peter Blood swept them lightly aside, reading into them none of her meaning, as she feared he would.

“Aye — a deal of lies, devil a doubt, as I could prove to you.”

“I cannot think why you should trouble to put yourself on your defence,” she discouraged him.

“So that ye may think less badly of me than you do.”

“What I think of you can be a very little matter to you, sir.”

This was a disarming stroke.  He abandoned combat for expostulation.

“Can ye say that now?  Can ye say that, beholding me in this livery of a service I despise?  Didn’t ye tell me that I might redeem the past?  It’s little enough I am concerned to redeem the past save only in your eyes.  In my own I’ve done nothing at all that I am ashamed of, considering the provocation I received.”

Her glance faltered, and fell away before his own that was so intent.

“I...  I can’t think why you should speak to me like this,” she said, with less than her earlier assurance.