“Why not at breakfast?”
“Because we shall eat alone, here,—auntie and I—in our cabin.”
“Very well then, if it seems you are so bitter against the new commander of the ship that you will not sit at the captain’s table—as we did the second time we went to Europe together, we three—don’t you remember, Helena?”
“Never—at your table, sir!” said Helena Emory, her voice like a stab. And when I bethought me what that had meant before now, what it would mean all my life, if this woman might never sit at board of mine, never eat the fruit of my bow and spear, never share with me the bread of life, for one instant I felt the cold thrust of fate’s steel once more in my bowels. But the next instant a new manner of feeling took its place, an emotion I never had felt toward her before—anger, rage!
“It is well,” said I, pulling together the best I could. “And now, by my halidom! or by George! or by anything! you shall be taken at your word. You breakfast here. Be glad if it is more than bread and water—until you learn a better way of speech with me.”
Again I saw that same sudden change on her face, surprise, almost fright; and I swear she shrank from me as though in terror, her hand plucking at Aunt Lucinda’s sleeve; whereas, all Aunt Lucinda could do was to pluck at her niece’s sleeve in turn.
“As to the parley, then,” said I, pulling, by mistake, my mask from my pocket instead of my kerchief, “we shall hold it, to-morrow, at what time and in what place I please. It ill beseems a gentleman to pain one so fair, as we may again remark; but by heaven! Helena, no resistance!”
“Wait! What do you really mean?” She raised a hand. “I’ve told you I just can’t understand all this. I always thought you were a—a—gentleman.”
“A much misused word,” was my answer. “You never understood me at all. I am not a gentleman. I’m a poor, miserable, unhappy, drifting, aimless and useless failure—at least, I was, until I resolved upon this way to recoup my fortunes, and went in for pirating. What chance has a man who has lost his fortune in the game to-day—what chance with a woman? You ask me, who am I? I am a pirate. You ask what I intend to do? What pirate can answer that? It all depends.”
“On what?”