"But I can't treat them as they would me," she reminded him, her anxious eyes holding his till he looked away, with an effort of will. "I could never be happy here, or anywhere else, if I left any of my old shipmates in the power of the law. Chance has brought us both here—and in time. Will you not wipe the past out of your mind entirely, as I have done, and—You won't refuse me the first favour I have asked of you, here in your home? And I won't ever forget how good you have always been to me."
He looked into her eyes again, and was lost. "Have it your own way, then," he said, as if with a grudge. "But—" His face fell. He looked furtively behind him. He had just remembered his pact with Farish M'Kissock. "You must get rid of them both at once, and very quietly," he whispered. "I won't answer for what may happen yet unless—"
Sallie did not even wait to thank him for his weak-willed complaisance. She crossed swiftly to the table where Jasper Slyne and Mr. Jobling were once more in low-voiced conclave with Captain Dove.
The three conspirators, sitting with heads together, in angry, undertoned argument, glanced up as she approached them. Their lowering faces lightened a little at sight of her, but fell again into black, rebellious masks while they listened sullenly to what she had to say. As she finished, Captain Dove brought a heavy fist down upon the table like a sledge-hammer, and, while the glasses still rang to its impact on the solid oak, "I'll be damned if I budge from here by one step," he cried at the top of his voice, and sprang from his chair, "till it suits me." He pulled his smoked glasses from off his nose, flung them on the floor, and trod viciously upon them as he advanced on Lord Jura again, ignoring all his companions' attempts to restrain him.
"Now, see here, my friend!" said he with another fierce imprecation, and thrust his face up close to the ex-engineer's while Carthew stepped hastily forward beside Lord Jura. "Now, see here, my friend! I've had about enough of you and your nonsense. Say whatever you've got to say to me now yourself and be done with it. Then I'll tell you what you're going to do—for me and my adopted daughter. There's no need for any more humming and hawing about it. Speak up!"
But his former slave did not shrink from before his withering glance. The banquet-hall of Loquhariot was not the bridge of the Olive Branch: and Lord Jura was even glad that his one-time tyrant did not seem disposed to avail himself of that last chance of escape at which Sallie had beguiled him into conniving.
"For my sister's sake," he said quietly, and not without dignity, "I was willing to—"
"You'll do whatever I tell you—for your own sake as well as your sister's," broke in Captain Dove, and looked him up and down with a virtuous frown. "Why, but for me, you'd have no sister!" He lowered his voice to a threatening whisper. "And you'd have hung long ago yourself, for the murder that you did here!" he hissed.
Lord Jura regarded him gravely for a moment or two, in silence; and then, turning toward the Pipers' Port, "Are you there, M'Kissock?" he called, in the tone of one entitled to prompt attention.