My question seemed so exactly to his mind that he could hardly restrain a chuckle. But I soon provided a bitter antidote to his satisfaction.
"Captain," says I, "I hate you. I would rather have one hand cut off than that poor prisoner lad should be brought back and hanged at Tyburn in his shame. And I would sooner the other hand should perish too than that the Earl, my father, should be committed in his age in dishonour to a gaol. Captain, I repeat, I hate you!"
I meant every word of what I said, and my voice made no disguise of its sincerity. And at last I had found a tender place in the Captain's armour. My words left him livid as his wig. At once I saw why he was affected so. The Captain was in love, and the object of his passion had just told him in the frankest terms how much she was prepared to sacrifice for the sake of another man. I will admit that my handling of the Captain was not too tender. But let us grant full deserts, even to the devil. I had hit the Captain pretty hard, but beyond a slight betrayal of its immediate shock, the blow was accepted beautifully. Without a word he went on writing, and in despite of the cruel situation he had put me in, and the hatred that I bore towards him, he forced me to admire his nature in its silken strength. And for that night at least I could not rid my brain of the picture that he made, as he sat writing his dispatches in the library with the lamp and firelight playing on his livid face and his increasing labours. I began to fear that a second man had come into my life.
