“Sorry, I assure you,” murmured Noah, apologetically. “Sorry I so blundered against your daughter's sensibilities. Please recall her, madam, if only to hear me ask forgiveness.”
The daughter, whose emotion was of the briefest, returned, with nose reddened and look more bilious than before. Noah became profuse in his regrets, and severely characterized his own awkwardness.
“Nor are you to have blame for your feeling,” said he, addressing the daughter and as a finish to his self-reproaches. “Your mother has done us the honor to confide the once nearness of the handsome purser Timberlake to you. And that hideous woman who stole him away! I do not marvel you hate her. I could teach you to write her such a letter as should be a revenge; for I know one of her secrets, the very name of which would crush her like a falling tree.”
It was to me a thing astounding how neither of these women resented the raw freedom of Noah's words. On the contrary, they went with him, making no question of the propriety of such talk on the tongue of a stranger. They would appear not to have been crossed by such a thought, for, so to phrase it, they fell in with Noah, and, as if it were, hand in hand.
At the word “secrets,” both women sat bolt upright and questioned Noah with tongue and eye. What was this hidden sin of that siren, Peg O'Neal? They panted for a fullest tale of it.
“Nay, then,” remonstrated Noah, “it was but a slip. I said I could teach you how to write a letter that should strike her to the soul. But of what avail? Timberlake is dead; his grave is the Mediterranean.”
“But she lives,” hissed the daughter. “Tell me that secret concerning her, and I shall call you my best friend.” Truly, the bilious maiden had a taste for vengeance as pointed as a thorn.
“Why, then,” returned Noah, hesitating with invented reluctance, “there is no reason why I should not humor your wishes. Take your pen, and I'll dictate that letter I have in my mind.”
The bilious one wheeled about to a writing table which stood by her side, and while the rest of us sat silent—for the mother and myself had long before surrendered our semblance of conversation, and the unhappy dominie still pored upon the floor—Noah began with finger on forehead as one who cudgels memory.
“Write her this,” said Noah. “Revenge is sweet! I have you in my power; and I shall burn you as savages burn their victim at the stake. Think not that you can escape me. I would not that death nor any evil thing should take you out of my hand for half the world.” When Noah began this evil dictation, the lime-faced one took down his opening words with greedy pen. As he proceeded, she first hesitated, and then with blanched, scared face, whirled herself upon him. Her pen fell to the floor, while her hands shook in a gust of fear. At the close she gasped: