"Yes, Death! I told you, Spirit, that Death and Fire were often allies! But now, as we are no longer masquerading, permit me, Mrs. Berners, to present myself to you as Captain Inconnu," he said, with another and a deeper bow.
"That name tells me nothing," replied Sybil.
"What name does more?" inquired the stranger; and then, without expecting an answer, he turned to Moloch, and said in his smoothest tones:
"Be so good as to give me this seat, sir."
But Sybil saw that the giant turned pale and trembled like the fabled mountain in labor, as he left the seat by her side, and slunk into another at some distance; and she felt far more fear of the graceful "Captain Inconnu," who now placed himself beside her, and behaved with so much deference, than she had felt of the brutal "Moloch," who had treated her with the rudest familiarity. And this fear was not at all modified by a whisper that reached her acute ears, from the man at whose side the giant had now seated himself.
"I could a' told you what you'd get, if you meddled wi' the Captain's gal! Now look out."
But the "Captain" conducted himself with the greatest courtesy towards his guest.
"Come here, Princess!" he said, addressing the girl, "come here and place yourself on the other side of this lady. If you are Princess, she is Queen."
The girl immediately came around and seated herself. And the master of the house helped his guest to the most delicate morsels of the viands before him.
Sybil, though in deadly fear of her gentlemanly attendant, accepted every one of his attentions with a smile. She knew poor child, to whom she was now obliged to pay court. Her one idea was her husband; her one want, to be reunited to him, at all risks or costs to liberty or life; and she knew that this man, the autocrat, as well as the Captain of his band, had the power to restore her to her husband, and so she exerted all her powers of pleasing to win his favor.