“Yes,” he said, slowly; “it is to be regretted. Is it because I am the son of a nameless father and only the mate of ‘The Last Hope’?”
“If you were before the mast—” she answered—“if you were a King, it would make no difference. It is simply because I do not care for you in that way.”
“You do not care for me—in that way,” he echoed, with a laugh, which made her move as if she were shrinking. “Well, there is nothing more to be said to that.”
He looked at her slowly, and then took off his cap as if to bid her good-bye. But he forgot to replace it, and he went away with the cap in his hand. She heard the clink of a chain as he loosed his boat.
CHAPTER X — IN THE ITALIAN HOUSE
The Abbé Touvent was not a courageous man, and the perspiration, induced by the climb from the high-road up that which had once been the ramp to the Château of Gemosac, ran cold when he had turned the key in the rusty lock of the great gate. It was not a dark night, for the moon sailed serenely behind fleecy clouds, but the shadows cast by her silvery light might harbour any terror.
It is easy enough to be philosophic at home in a chair beside the lamp. Under those circumstances, the Abbé had reflected that no one would rob him, because he possessed nothing worth stealing. But now, out here in the dark, he recalled a hundred instances of wanton murder duly recorded in the newspaper which he shared with three parishioners in Gemosac.
He paused to wipe his brow with a blue cotton handkerchief before pushing open the gate, and, being alone, was not too proud to peep through the keyhole before laying his shoulder against the solid and weather-beaten oak. He glanced nervously at the loopholes in the flanking towers and upward at the machicolated battlement overhanging him, as if any crumbling peep-hole might harbour gleaming eyes. He hurried through the passage beneath the vaulted roof without daring to glance to either side, where doorways and steps to the towers were rendered more fearsome by heavy curtains of ivy.