"Nay," he replied. "Nay. Not that. Not that. I have heard of Cuddiford, though. I think he was brought to London and tried. But--but--oh!" he exclaimed, breaking off, "it cannot be!"
"What cannot be?"
"If," he said, speaking very slowly, very gravely now, "if it were not eight years since I last set eyes on him, when I was quite a child; if he had a beard down over his chest instead of being close shaven, I should say, Mervan, that this was the ruffian I have come to England to seek; the villain who robbed me of the fortune my father left me--the scoundrel, James Eaton."
"James Eaton!" I exclaimed. "The man you asked me about; thought I might be like to know?"
"The same."
"Had he, this Eaton, been a buccaneer? for I make no doubt that man has." I said. "The captain of La Mouche Noire thought so--and--and--his ravings and deliriums seemed to point that way."
"I know not," Juan said. "Eaton was a villain--yet--yet--I can scarce suppose my father would have trusted him with a fortune if he had known him to be such as that."
"Who was your father, Juan?"
"I--I," he answered, looking at me with those clear starry eyes--eyes into which none could gaze without marvelling at their beauty--"I do not know."
"You do not know!--yet you know he bequeathed a fortune to you and left it in the man Eaton's hands."