“And if no chance should offer?” she asked him.
“Why then I will make one,” he answered, lightly almost. “I have been making them all my life, and it would be odd if I should have lost the trick of it on my life’s most important occasion.”
This mention of his life led to a question from her.
“How did you contrive the chance that has made you what you are? I mean,” she added quickly, as if fearing that the purport of that question might be misunderstood, “that has enabled you to become a corsair captain.”
“’Tis a long story that,” he said. “I should weary you in the telling of it.”
“No,” she replied, and shook her head, her clear eyes solemnly meeting his clouded glance. “You would not weary me. Chances may be few in which to learn it.”
“And you would learn it?” quoth he, and added, “That you may judge me?”
“Perhaps,” she said, and her eyes fell.
With bowed head he paced the length of the small chamber, and back again. His desire was to do her will in this, which is natural enough—for if it is true that who knows all must perforce forgive all, never could it have been truer than in the case of Sir Oliver Tressilian.
So he told his tale. Pacing there he related it at length, from the days when he had toiled at an oar on one of the galleys of Spain down to that hour in which aboard the Spanish vessel taken under Cape Spartel he had determined upon that voyage to England to present his reckoning to his brother. He told his story simply and without too great a wealth of detail, yet he omitted nothing of all that had gone to place him where he stood. And she, listening, was so profoundly moved that at one moment her eyes glistened with tears which she sought vainly to repress. Yet he, pacing there, absorbed, with head bowed and eyes that never once strayed in her direction, saw none of this.