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176 "As a woman! Troth, no! There's nothing less likely, nothing less possible, I assure you. I intend to treat you—I am treating you—as Jem Bax the smuggler, as hardened a ruffian as I've ever met, as ferocious as a savage, and with naught of the other sex about him but the cunning and the meanness!"

"Meanness!"

She quailed under the word. For the first time she flinched, and her eyelids quivered.

"Yes. 'Twould be vastly mean in a man to attempt to harm the enemy who had come to his succor, had promised to pardon him, to let him escape. In a woman 'twould be worse than meanness; but what 'tis accounted by a creature of your sort, that's neither honest man nor true woman, why, in sooth, I know not!"

Again her gray eyes flashed a steely fire as they met his. There was a sudden touch of sex in the lowered eyelids, in the flush which came into her cheek, as she felt the young man's gaze full upon her, saw his handsome features so near her own. She drew a deep, shuddering breath, and then said, in a fierce whisper, turning away her head, and moving nervously under the touch of his strong hands