Early in the evening, Vytal, re-entering the town, was surprised to find her evidently awaiting him at the fort.
“The man,” she exclaimed, breathlessly, without any prelude of greeting, “the man you fought with on the bridge is here!”
“Frazer?”
“Yes, Frazer, known lately as Ralph Contempt.”
A sharp, sudden comprehension, all the keener for having been so long deferred, sprang into the soldier’s face. “’Twas to set him a-land that the Spanish vessel anchored to the southward. I knew the boy’s eyes. ’Twas his heavy beard deceived me.”
She smiled. “A woman knows from the heart,” she said, “while a man’s head aches with perplexity. And, besides, whereas he only fought with you, me he insulted.” Her cheeks flushed, her eyes revealing the pure hatred and anger they had so long been forced to mask with smiles.
The look fired Vytal’s blood. But, following his first silent fury, an expression which had never yet been in his eyes changed them to those of a wounded animal, and he seemed for the moment almost ashamed. The thought had cut him cruelly that his worst enemies on earth were a mere careless stripling and a shallow drunkard, with not even the boy’s bravery to commend him as a foe. There are a few men who regret the lack of noble power in an enemy as deeply as the many deplore its non-existence in a friend.
“Where is he?”
“I have imprisoned him in the Admiral.”
“You!”