“Exactly.”
“How does it apply, Mr. Carter?”
“Why, his natural proclivities are those of a gentleman. His calling as a pirate is an avocation rather than a vocation. He can play the brute, but he cannot wholly become one.”
“He is certainly acting the part of one now,” said Mrs. Kane.
“Granted; but it is only outwardly. Inherently, he is still a man of genteel tendencies. He has held you up in the middle of the ocean and robbed you of the greatest treasure you possess, but he has not done it for ransom—he has done it because he is in love with Bessie, and because he realized the utter hopelessness of his love, since we sent his brother to prison, and proved to our own satisfaction that he was as deep in the mud as his brother was in the mire.
“Don’t you understand that the moment Bessie became a prisoner aboard his craft he realized her entire helplessness? Don’t you see that he never realized the enormity of the outrage he was committing, until he saw her seated there in his cabin, absolutely at his mercy? Can’t I make you understand that, bad as he is, all the good there is in him rose to the surface at that moment, and every chivalric strain there is in him, descended from his ancestors, appealed to him then and there to protect her?”
“The point is,” said Kane, “that he started in to make a sow’s ear out of himself, and has had an opportunity to find out that it can’t be done; eh?”
“Precisely. There are some things which cannot be accomplished by a man, no matter how intent he may be upon it; and the greatest of them all is, that he cannot change his nature. The genteel blood which flows in the veins of Count Cadillac would no more permit him to offer offense to Bessie Harlan, unprotected as she is, than it would you or me, Kane.”
“By Jove, Carter! I believe you!”
“Certainly; so, you see, we must start in with the assurance that she is as safe from actual harm where she is as if she were here with us now.”