Page:George Gibbs--Love of Monsieur.djvu/234

 “If you please, madame. I would have you below. ’Tis a rough crew, and I’ll not answer for them—”

“But you will tell me—”

“Madame, you’ve purged your conscience. There your duty ends. At Port Royal it shall be arranged that you are sent to Porto Bello. As for me, my will is made.”

“Ah, you are malignant,” she cried, with a flash of spirit, his cold, sinister eye sinking and piercing deep into her heart like cold steel. “You are not he whom I have sought. He was frank, generous, kind. A strange, bitter, monstrous creature has grown in his guise.” Her voice trembled and broke as she moved to the hatchway.

“May God help you,” she said, in a kind of sobbing whisper, “who have so little kindness and pity for others.” And in a moment she had faded, a slender, shrinking shade of sorrow, from his vision.

When she was gone he fell upon the bulwarks and buried his face in his hands.

“Ah, bon Dieu!” he murmured; “how could I 222