hn," she answered, and took the hands
that he extended. "Oh, have pity!" she cried with a sudden change to
utter intercession. "I implore you to have pity!"

"What pity can I show you, child? You have but to name...."

"'Tis not pity for me, but pity for him that I am beseeching of you."

"For him?" he cried, frowning again.

"For Oliver Tressilian."

He dropped her hands and stood away. "God's light!" he swore. "You sue
for pity for Oliver Tressilian, for that renegade, that incarnate
devil? Oh, you are mad!" he stormed. "Mad!" and he flung away from her,
whirling his arms.

"I love him," she said simply.

That answer smote him instantly still. Under the shock of it he just
stood and stared at her again, his jaw fallen.

"You love him!" he said at last below his breath. "You love him! You
love a man who is a pirate, a renegade, the abductor of yourself and of
Lionel, the man who murdered your brother!"

"He did not." She was fierce in her denial of it. "I have learnt the
truth of that matter."

"From his lips, I suppose?" said Sir John, and he was unable to repress
a sneer. "And you believed him?"

"Had I not believed him I should not have married him."

"Married him?" Sudden horror came now to temper his bewilderment. Was
there to be no end to these astounding revelations? Had they reached the
climax yet, he wondered, or was there still more to come? "You married
that infamous villain?" he asked, and his voice was expressionless.

"I did--in Algiers on the night we landed there." He stood gaping at her
whilst a man might count to a dozen, and then abruptly he exploded. "It
is enough!" he roared, shaking a clenched fist at the low ceiling of the
cabin. "It is enough, as God's my Witness. If there were no other reason
to hang him, that would be reason and to spare. You may look to me to
make an end of this infamous marriage within the hour."

"Ah, if you will but listen to me!" she pleaded.

"Listen to you?" He paused by the door to which he had stepped in his
fury, intent upon giving the word that there and then should make an
end, and summoning Oliver Tressilian before him, announce his fate to
him and see it executed on the spot. "Listen to you?" he repeated,
scorn and anger blending in his voice. "I have heard more than enough
already!"

It was the Killigrew way, Lord Henry Goade assures us, pausing here at
long length for one of those digressions into the history of families
whose members chance