. Take me to my father, and I will bless the day that I
ever saw you first." And before I knew what she would be at, she had
knelt down and kissed my hand, with a passion of weeping, that proud,
beautiful creature whom I had last seen in all the glory of her youth
and loveliness, the jewel of her native town.

I raised her up tenderly, and drew her forth out of that vile place. A
week later the Admiral carried his fleet back to Bombay; but I had got
my discharge, and was with Marian on board the sloop _Thetis_, of
twenty-six guns, bound for the river Hooghley with despatches.

CHAPTER VIII

_IN THE COMPANY'S SERVICE_

And now I must pass quickly over that time of my life on which I
should most love to linger, those halcyon hours when, with Marian by
my side and the prospect bright before us, we voyaged through those
Indian seas, down the long coast of Malabar and up the long coast of
Coromandel, past the Isle of Serendib, and the reefs and foaming seas,
to where the tangled banyan roots overgrow the muddy mouth of the
Hooghley.

Being, as we were, the only two idle persons on board that ship, we
were thrown upon each other's company day after day, and in the long
talks we had together she gave me her account of the injuries which
she had suffered at the hands of my cousin Gurney. And what pleased me
most in these conversations was not to hear her kind and loving
professions towards myself, so much as that bitterness which she now
manifested against Rupert, for whom, she told me, she cherished a
hatred as strong as her former liking and attachment.

"You are not to think," she said, "that I ever held your cousin in
that regard which he was vain enough to believe and boast of. It is
true we were good friends, and had been such before I had yet made
your acquaintance. But he was a man for whom I had a strong distrust,
and that in spite of his swaggering airs and gallant speeches, fit to
turn the head of some silly, vain girl who knew nothing of the world."

"How came you to put yourself in that villain's hands," I asked, with
some reproachfulness, "by venturing on board the _Fair Maid_?"

"I own that was a wrong, foolish act," she answered, "of which the
wrongs I have suffered in consequence are sufficient proof. But when I
first yielded to Rupert Gurney's solicitations to take my passage in
that ship, I looked to the fact that Captain Sims was her commander,
and it was him I relied on to afford me protect