Major Mallard saluted and departed.  Peter Blood sat back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, frowning.  Time moved on.  Came a tap at the door, and an elderly negro slave presented himself.  Would his excellency receive Miss Bishop?

His excellency changed colour.  He sat quite still, staring at the negro a moment, conscious that his pulses were drumming in a manner wholly unusual to them.  Then quietly he assented.

He rose when she entered, and if he was not as pale as she was, it was because his tan dissembled it.  For a moment there was silence between them, as they stood looking each at the other.  Then she moved forward, and began at last to speak, haltingly, in an unsteady voice, amazing in one usually so calm and deliberate.

“I...  I...  Major Mallard has just told me....”

“Major Mallard exceeded his duty,” said Blood, and because of the effort he made to steady his voice it sounded harsh and unduly loud.

He saw her start, and stop, and instantly made amends.  “You alarm yourself without reason, Miss Bishop.  Whatever may lie between me and your uncle, you may be sure that I shall not follow the example he has set me.  I shall not abuse my position to prosecute a private vengeance.  On the contrary, I shall abuse it to protect him.  Lord Willoughby’s recommendation to me is that I shall treat him without mercy.  My own intention is to send him back to his plantation in Barbados.”

She came slowly forward now.  “I...  I am glad that you will do that.  Glad, above all, for your own sake.”  She held out her hand to him.

He considered it critically.  Then he bowed over it.  “I’ll not presume to take it in the hand of a thief and a pirate,” said he bitterly.

“You are no longer that,” she said, and strove to smile.

“Yet I owe no thanks to you that I am not,” he answered.  “I think there’s no more to be said, unless it be to add the assurance that Lord Julian Wade has also nothing to apprehend from me.  That, no doubt, will be the assurance that your peace of mind requires?”

“For your own sake — yes.  But for your own sake only.  I would not have you do anything mean or dishonouring.”

“Thief and pirate though I be?”

She clenched her hand, and made a little gesture of despair and impatience.

“Will you never forgive me those words?”

“I’m finding it a trifle hard, I confess.  But what does it matter, when all is said?”

Her clear hazel eyes considered him a moment wistfully.  Then she put out her hand again.

“I am going, Captain Blood.  Since you are so generous to my uncle, I shall be returning to Barbados with him.  We are not like to meet again — ever.  Is it impossible that we should part friends?  Once I wronged you, I know.  And I have said that I am sorry.  Won’t you... won’t you say ’good-bye’?”

He seemed to rouse himself, to shake off a mantle of deliberate harshness.  He took the hand she proffered.  Retaining it, he spoke, his eyes sombrely, wistfully considering her.