y."

"Destroyed him?" His lordship laughed a little. "Be none so sure of
that. He has grown rich, I hear. He has translated, so it is said, his
Spanish spoils into French gold, which is being treasured up for him in
France. His future father-in-law, M. d'Ogeron, has seen to that."

"His future father-in-law?" said she, and stared at him round-eyed, with
parted lips. Then added: "M. d'Ogeron? The Governor of Tortuga?"

"The same. You see the fellow's well protected. It's a piece of news I
gathered in St. Nicholas. I am not sure that I welcome it, for I am
not sure that it makes any easier a task upon which my kinsman, Lord
Sunderland, has sent me hither. But there it is. You didn't know?"

She shook her head without replying. She had averted her face, and her
eyes were staring down at the gently heaving water. After a moment she
spoke, her voice steady and perfectly controlled.

"But surely, if this were true, there would have been an end to his
piracy by now. If he... if he loved a woman and was betrothed, and was
also rich as you say, surely he would have abandoned this desperate
life, and..."

"Why, so I thought," his lordship interrupted, "until I had the
explanation. D'Ogeron is avaricious for himself and for his child. And
as for the girl, I'm told she's a wild piece, fit mate for such a man as
Blood. Almost I marvel that he doesn't marry her and take her a-roving
with him. It would be no new experience for her. And I marvel, too, at
Blood's patience. He killed a man to win her."

"He killed a man for her, do you say?" There was horror now in her
voice.

"Yes--a French buccaneer named Levasseur. He was the girl's lover and
Blood's associate on a venture. Blood coveted the girl, and killed
Levasseur to win her. Pah! It's an unsavoury tale, I own. But men live
by different codes out in these parts...."

She had turned to face him. She was pale to the lips, and her hazel eyes
were blazing, as she cut into his apologies for Blood.

"They must, indeed, if his other associates allowed him to live after
that."

"Oh, the thing was done in fair fight, I am told."

"Who told you?"

"A man who sailed with them, a Frenchman named Cahusac, whom I found in
a waterside tavern in St. Nicholas. He was Levasseur's lieutenant,
and he was present on the island where the thing happened, and when
Levasseur was killed."

"And the girl? Did he say the girl was present, too?"

"Yes. She was a witness of the encounter. Bl