“Is there no other reason?” inquired I, remembering the words of Richard Burke. “Is there not between you two a cause more personal?”
“There may be,” she replied thoughtfully; “for clever as she is, she was not sufficiently so to conceal from me her predilection for the MacWilliam. But what is that to me? Richard Burke is nothing to me.”
“You may be much to him, however,” I answered, whereat she grew more thoughtful still. Being a woman, I said to myself, she could hardly have failed to read the signs of his regard for her. Then I told her of the midnight visit he had paid me, saying nothing, nevertheless, of what Richard Burke had confided to me in regard to his love for herself.
“He is a friend,” said she, after musing for awhile, “and I may have need of many such.”
“Tell me what passed between you and Sir Nicholas.”
She paced the floor of the poop-cabin with quick, uneven steps; then she stopped and spoke.
“After our first meeting,” said she, “he was much less open with me, asking me many questions, but giving no expression of his own views with respect to the ships. Two things, however, he impressed upon me. One was that he considered that I should make immediately a suitable marriage——”
“A suitable marriage!” I exclaimed.
“The other was that it was common report that my father had left great riches behind him, and that, as he had never paid any tribute to the Queen, I must now make good his deficiencies in that respect.”