Coppinger looked steadily at her for a while, then he said, “Are you ill? You look as if you were.”
“I have had much to go through of late.”
He remained looking at her, brooding over something in his mind. She perplexed him; he wondered at her. He could not comprehend the spirit that was in her, that sustained a delicate little frame, and made her defy him.
His eyes wandered round the room, and he signed to Uncle Zachie to give him his stick again.
“What is that?” said he, pointing to the miniature on the stand for music, where Mr. Menaida had put it, over a sheet of the music he had been playing, or attempting to play.
“It is my son, Oliver,” said Uncle Zachie.
“Why is it there? Has she been looking at it? Let me see it.”
Mr. Menaida hesitated, but presently handed it to the redoubted Captain, with nervous twitches in his face. “I value it highly—my only child.”
Coppinger looked at it, with a curl of his lips; then handed it back to Mr. Menaida.