The sailor bent down, as if to see the compass more clearly, and tugged sharply at Miss Nevil’s fur cloak.  It was quite evident his lament could not be sung before Lieutenant Orso.

“What were you singing, Paolo France?” said Orso.  “Was it a ballata or a vocero?  Mademoiselle understands you, and would like to hear the end.”

“I have forgotten it, Ors’ Anton’,” said the sailor.

And instantly he began a hymn to the Virgin, at the top of his voice.

Miss Lydia listened absent-mindedly to the hymn, and did not press the singer any further—­though she was quite resolved, in her own mind, to find out the meaning of the riddle later.  But her maid, who, being a Florentine, could not understand the Corsican dialect any better than her mistress, was as eager as Miss Lydia for information, and, turning to Orso, before the English lady could warn her by a nudge, she said:  “Captain what does giving the rimbecco mean?”

“The rimbecco!” said Orso.  “Why, it’s the most deadly insult that can be offered to a Corsican.  It means reproaching him with not having avenged his wrong.  Who mentioned the rimbecco to you?”

“Yesterday, at Marseilles,” replied Miss Lydia hurriedly, “the captain of the schooner used the word.”

“And whom was he talking about?” inquired Orso eagerly.

“Oh, he was telling us some odd story about the time—­yes, I think it was about Vannina d’Ornano.”

“I suppose, mademoiselle, that Vannina’s death has not inspired you with any great love for our national hero, the brave Sampiero?”

“But do you think his conduct was so very heroic?”

“The excuse for his crime lies in the savage customs of the period.  And then Sampiero was waging deadly war against the Genoese.  What confidence could his fellow-countrymen have felt in him if he had not punished his wife, who tried to treat with Genoa?”

“Vannina,” said the sailor, “had started off without her husband’s leave.  Sampiero did quite right to wring her neck!”

“But,” said Miss Lydia, “it was to save her husband, it was out of love for him, that she was going to ask his pardon from the Genoese.”

“To ask his pardon was to degrade him!” exclaimed Orso.

“And then to kill her himself!” said Miss Lydia.  “What a monster he must have been!”

“You know she begged as a favour that she might die by his hand.  What about Othello, mademoiselle, do you look on him, too, as a monster?”

“There is a difference; he was jealous.  Sampiero was only vain!”

“And after all is not jealousy a kind of vanity?  It is the vanity of love; will you not excuse it on account of its motive?”

Miss Lydia looked at him with an air of great dignity, and turning to the sailor, inquired when the schooner would reach port.

“The day after to-morrow,” said he, “if the wind holds.”