He was persistent, and his persistence was increased when he came to
conceive his notion to take the seas again. His conscience would not
permit him to heave anchor until he had bestowed her safely in wedlock.
Lionel too was persistent, in a quiet, almost self-effacing way that
never set a strain upon her patience, and was therefore the more
difficult to combat.

In the end she gave way under the pressure of these men's wills, and
did so with the best grace she could summon, resolved to drive from her
heart and mind the one real obstacle of which, for very shame, she had
made no mention to Sir John. The fact is that in spite of all, her love
for Sir Oliver was not dead. It was stricken down, it is true, until she
herself failed to recognize it for what it really was. But she caught
herself thinking of him frequently and wistfully; she found herself
comparing him with his brother; and for all that she had bidden Sir John
find her some other husband than Lionel, she knew full well that any
suitor brought before her must be submitted to that same comparison to
his inevitable undoing. All this she accounted evil in herself. It was
in vain that she lashed her mind with the reminder that Sir Oliver was
Peter's murderer. As time went on she found herself actually making
excuses for her sometime lover; she would admit that Peter had driven
him to the step, that for her sake Sir Oliver had suffered insult upon
insult from Peter, until, being but human, the cup of his endurance had
overflowed in the end, and weary of submitting to the other's blows he
had risen up in his anger and smitten in his turn.

She would scorn herself for such thoughts as these, yet she could not
dismiss them. In act she could be strong--as witness how she had dealt
with that letter which Oliver sent her out of Barbary by the hand of
Pitt--but her thoughts she could not govern, and her thoughts were full
often traitors to her will. There were longings in her heart for Oliver
which she could not stifle, and there was ever the hope that he would
one day return, although she realized that from such a return she might
look for nothing.

When Sir John finally slew the hope of that return he did a wiser thing
than he conceived. Never since Oliver's disappearance had they heard any
news of him until Pitt came to Arwenack with that letter and his story.
They had heard, as had all the world, of the corsair Sakr-el-Bahr, but
they had been far indeed from conne