Then an escort was sent under Lieutenant Vassall’s command—for Will was in attendance on Admiral the Lord Eastry—to conduct the rescued prisoners to the Castel dell’ Uovo until word could be got off to the flagship about them. They got there without mishap, though Will would have been mighty glad to have changed places with Vassall. He had no desire for conversation yet; and for guarding Katherine, Vassall was quite sufficiently near.
Arrived at the Castle, Lord Eastry and his daughter were conducted to the Governor’s apartments, which had a flat roof, where there was mounted a powerful glass beside our lately added heavy ordnance.
What happened thereafter I had from Will, and have heard with much more humour, since their happy marriage, from Katherine. I don’t know by what chance or design his lordship stumped up to the roof alone—a difficult matter for him; but certain it is that very soon after their arrival Will found himself subjected to the severest fire of the whole campaign in a tête-à-tête with Katherine.
Katherine came straight to him with both hands outstretched. He took them, and held her at arms’ length.
“Well, Will, aren’t you going to kiss me? Is this what the dying away of letters meant?”
He hung his head, and did not speak for a little, while Katherine in all the glory of her fairness regarded him in a rather mystified, rather hurt, but wholly affectionate way, instead of with offended pride, as he had hoped in his self-degradation. Now that he saw his betrothed before him, in her superb health, and with the pride natural to the daughter and heir of a wealthy peer, tempered by honest affection—now, while he had still burning in his brain the remembrance, only an hour or two old, of the slim young beauty showing under fire the courage of her sea-dog forefathers—the image of poor Rusidda faded away. But as the sweet Indian fruit leaves behind it an evil taste, the infidelity to Katherine in having loved Rusidda left a memory as bitter as wormwood.
At last he spoke. “I am not fit to kiss you, Kitty Fleet: I have been living for the love of another woman.”
“What do you mean, Will?” she asked, with burning cheeks. As he did not answer she continued, “I suppose all men are alike when they are long away, though I thought you would have been disdainful of that. I think I can forgive, though I am foolish enough to be disappointed. But you will not see her again?”
“She is dead, poor soul.”
“Death wipes out all debts, even of a life like hers.”