Brinnen dropped his eyeglass and rubbed it for a moment with his handkerchief.
"You seem to take a great interest in my sister, Mr. Rodd," he said calmly.
"I have just asked her to marry me," Aaron Rodd replied bluntly.
Brinnen turned slowly around. He was suddenly like his grandfather. His eyebrows were a little uplifted. His expression was the expression of one who listens to some unthinkable thing.
"Absurd!" he muttered.
"It is nothing of the sort," Aaron Rodd answered simply. "If your sister has been guiltily concerned in your adventurous life, I, too, have turned myself into a receiver of stolen property. We are in the same boat, only I want to get her out of it. I have asked her to marry me and come over to America. We could start life again on what I have."
She leaned over suddenly and spoke to her brother in a low tone, and in a language which was strange to Aaron Rodd. His expression changed a little as he listened. Then the waiter appeared with their coffee and liqueurs. When they were served and he had left, Captain Brinnen reopened the subject.
"I gather that you yourself, Mr. Rodd," he observed, "have hankerings towards the humdrum life, the life of honesty and the virtues and that sort of thing."
"I have tried for many years to make an honest living," Aaron replied shortly. "The only time I ever crossed the line was long ago, when Harvey Grimm and I were in America. It wasn't anything very serious then. Our present transactions have been my only other essay. I come of an old-fashioned New England family, and however one may laugh at their principles and the narrowness of their outlook, I have those principles in my blood, and, frankly, I hate this life. If it's bad for me, it's worse for your sister. I want to take her away."
"I will consider what you have said, Mr. Rodd," Brinnen replied. "For the present we will, if you please, abandon the conversation."