CHAPTER IX.

SINCE YOU REFUSE, I THREATEN.

“Sit down, Nina,” he said, “I want to ask you something.”

“What is it?” she inquired. Her elevation of spirit was all gone, and with it her ecstasy of resentment and rebuke. All that she was conscious of now was the helpless feeling that he was immensely clever at ferreting out her inmost thoughts. Her fears were justified by his first question.

“Who has been talking to you about me?”

“Nobody,” she said, feebly.

“It was that fellow, Delessert. What did he say?”

Nina’s red lips immediately exhorted each other to wise silence by a strong and mutual pressure.

Captain Fordyce saw it, and although he had no conception of the innuendoes suggested to her, he immediately resolved to find some clue for his imagination to work upon.

“I know what it was,” he said, with determination; “any information from you will only second what I possess already.”

The lips flew open with an eager, “How do you know?”

“Don’t you suppose I see and hear a good deal in going about this steamer?”

“But you couldn’t have heard this morning,” she said, cunningly, “because he asked me to come away from the deck cabins, and there wasn’t a soul in the music-room. So how could you hear?”

“Does he not talk to other people?”

“No,” she said, promptly. “He said he wouldn’t for the world. You’re just pretending you’ve heard things.”

Captain Fordyce immediately abandoned this set of tactics for another. “I should think,” he said, gravely, “that a wife’s sense of honour would prevent her from listening to insinuations against her husband.”

A deeper cloud overshadowed her mobile face. “That’s just the trouble, ’Steban. He hinted and suggested. If he had said things right out, wouldn’t I have been mad with him!”

“What were the insinuations?”

“There--I’ve been telling you,” she said, penitently, “and I said I wouldn’t. I sha’n’t say another word.”

Her husband apparently made a like resolve, for he, too, sat speechless. How long was he going to keep her? and she restlessly drew out her watch, then made a motion as if to rise. A hand, however, was extended before her. She must sit there until she made further revelations. “I will not,” she determined, obstinately; but not a minute later a new thought entered her variable mind, and she made a slight movement indicative of curiosity.

She wisely waited, and after a time she said, hesitatingly, “’Steban--”

“Nina--”

She was nervously playing with his handkerchief, and, as if it supplied a suggestion, she raised her head. “Why do I have a fine handkerchief and you a coarse one?”

“There you are grappling with one of the heavy problems of life.”

“Have I any right to a fine one? Was I born to anything better than you?” she went on, in the same tentative manner.

A light broke over him, of which, however, no external flashes appeared. “That fool belongs to her father’s gang,” he scornfully reflected; “he has been asked to watch me, and suspects who she is. His game is to make her think she is being kept out of something, so she will join them. Well, my man, we shall see what we shall see.” Aloud he remarked, “Apparently, you may lay a just claim to more purple and fine linen than I possess.”

“Could you have it if you wished it? Would it be your right, or have I really more claim to things?” she urged. “Do not mind telling me, I would not care even--even if you had made some mistakes.”

“What kind of mistakes?”

“Well--I don’t know. Errors in judgment, we will say.”

“An error in judgment, like a poor man kidnapping a baby heiress, we will say.”

“You are making fun of me,” she said, faintly; but her face was crimson and he knew he was on the right track.

“And marrying her,” he continued, “and then the sharp young heiress found him out.”

“And forgave him,” she said, quickly. “Don’t forget that, ’Steban. She was cross at first, but she forgave him.”

“Why did she forgive him, Nina?” and he lowered his voice and his black head at the same time until he was within an inch of her face.

She drew back stiffly. “Because she had promised solemnly to stand by him.”

“When did she promise to stand by him?” he continued.

“When she married him; but he was hateful to her, and mysterious, and would not tell her things--’Steban, whose child am I?”

“It is almost dinner-time,” he observed, blandly. “You would do well to go and comb out that tousled, brown thicket.”

“I know that Mrs. Danvers is not my mother,” she said, intensely. “It is cruel to keep me in suspense. Is my mother living, ’Steban?”

“No,” he growled.

“Was she like Mrs. Danvers?”

“No,--she was an angel.”

“And my father, ’Steban?”

“What is the matter with Mr. Danvers?”

“He is not my father,--who is?”

“I don’t know anything about him,” and he resolutely turned his back on her.

She pursued him with questions, but he was deaf to them; at last, however, suddenly wheeling around with one himself, “How did you find out about Mrs. Danvers?”

“It was one day a month ago,” said the girl, in a low voice.

“But how?”

“It was on account of Mr. Danvers.”

“He was always doing some fool thing,--what was this one?”

“He gave me a present.”

“What was it?”

“A ring.”

“Didn’t he give his wife anything?”

“Oh, yes,--a book. He had been to Boston and he thought he would please us so much. It was pitiful. He saw she was annoyed, but he didn’t know what it was about, and went out of the room.”

“And she pitched into you.”

“Yes, she said you would be angry with him for giving me such handsome presents, and I thought what a strange thing for a mother to say; then it came over me like a flash,--‘This woman isn’t my mother.’”

“Did you tell her?”

“No, I ran up-stairs.”

“And cried.”

“And cried, ’Steban.”

“How did you feel?” he asked, curiously.

“How did I feel?” she repeated, musingly. “I felt, just for one dreadful minute, sick and faint and dizzy. It seemed as if the whole world were tumbling to pieces. Of course she had been jealous before, but in such little ways that I didn’t mind. This was such bad jealousy that it staggered me. I thought, ‘Is this my own mother?’ Then when it came over me that she wasn’t, I didn’t care so much. I suppose own mothers are never jealous?”

“Sometimes they are,” he muttered.

Nina drew a long breath. “Then a home like this must be a purgatory.”

“I could tell you stories,” he said, hurriedly, “but pshaw!--you haven’t the nerve. I will not hasten your knowledge of the ugly secrets of life. I suppose, child, you would have been glad to see me walking in just then?”

“I put your picture on the pillow,” she said, fervently; “I built a little fort of handkerchiefs around it, all but the eyes, to keep the tears off--”

She broke off, for his black, scintillating eyes were bent on her with the expression that she did not like. “I had only you to turn to,” she said, coldly. “Will you tell me some more about my real parents?”

“No, dear crybaby.”

“Then I shall apply to that young man.”

“Very well, apply to him--and regret it.”

“He is very handsome,” she said, aggravatingly.

“Very.”

“And young.”

“Quite a baby like yourself.”

“I like him,” she said, tauntingly.

“But you would not cry over his photograph.”

She sprang up, opened her mouth to make a response, thought better of it, and, with a threatening frown, ran down the steps to the deck.