And when the
news of it reached Tortuga and the buccaneers who awaited his
return, the name of Captain Blood, which had stood so high among
the Brethren of the Coast, would become a byword, a thing of
execration, and before all was done his life might pay forfeit
for what would be accounted a treacherous defection. And for
what had he placed himself in this position? For the sake of a
girl who avoided him so persistently and intentionally that he
must assume that she still regarded him with aversion. He had
scarcely been vouchsafed a glimpse of her in all this fortnight,
although with that in view for his main object he had daily haunted
her uncle's residence, and daily braved the unmasked hostility and
baffled rancour in which Colonel Bishop held him. Nor was that
the worst of it. He was allowed plainly to perceive that it was
the graceful, elegant young trifler from St. James's, Lord Julian
Wade, to whom her every moment was devoted. And what chance had he,
a desperate adventurer with a record of outlawry, against such a
rival as that, a man of parts, moreover, as he was bound to admit?
You conceive the bitterness of his soul.
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