“Speak your will quickly, madame. I am in a press of business.”
“You must hear me to the end, monsieur. No matter what—”
“Ma foi, madame,” he sneered. “Is it you who command the ship or I? If there is aught you require, say on. If not, you will go below at once.”
“You must hear me, monsieur.”
“Madame”—he scowled and spoke with a studied brutality—“is it not enough that I have done your will once? I am taking you to safety. Try me not too far or—you may find reason to regret your presumption.” And as she shrank a little away from him: “What have you to expect from me? By what right do you seek me or ask me any favor?”
“By the right of a gentle birth. If not by that, by the right of a decent humanity.”
He laughed with an assumption of coarseness which sat strangely upon him.
“And have you no fear, Mistress Clerke? Does your instinct teach you no tremor?” He moved a pace nearer and glanced down upon her. “Do you not see, proud woman? Have you no trembling, no terror at the sight of me? Am I so gentle, so tractable, so ingenuous that you can defy me with impunity? You are in my power. There is no one to say me nay. What is there to prevent me doing with you as I will?”
She had not moved back from him the distance of a pace. And it was his eye that first fell before hers.