«You'll not be accused of it. But in him you've lost your only protector aboard this ship. What will betide you, do you suppose, when you are alone and helpless in their power, a prisoner of war, the captive of a raid, in the hands of these merry gentlemen of Spain?»
«God of Heaven!» She clutched her breast in terror.
«Quiet you,» he bade her, almost contemptuously. «I did not rescue you, as I supposed, from one wolf, merely to fling you to the pack. That will not happen — unless you yourself prefer it to returning to your husband.»
She grew hysterical.
«To my husband? Ah, that, no! Never that! Never that!»
«It is that or…» — he pointed to the door — «…The pack. I perceive no choice for you save between those alternatives.»
«Who are you?» she asked abruptly. «What are you, you devil, who have destroyed me and yet torment me?»
«I am your saviour, not your destroyer. Your husband, for his own sake, shall be left to suppose, as all have been led to suppose, that you were violently carried off. He will receive you back with relief of his own anguish and with tenderness, and make amends to you for all that the poor fool will fancy you have suffered.»
She laughed on a note of hysteria.
«Tenderness! Tenderness in my husband! If he had ever been tender I should not be where I now am.» And suddenly, to his surprise, she was moved to explain, to exculpate herself. «I was married to a cold, gross, stupid, cruel animal. That is Monsieur de Coulevain, a fool who has squandered his possessions and is forced to accept a command in these raw barbarous colonies to which he has dragged me.