"I first of all wish you to understand," continued Mr Lawrence, "that Miss Acton and I are in love with each other. We desire to be married. Captain Acton objects on the grounds of what I am forced to term my poverty; and certainly this quarter-deck would not know my tread if I were not poor. At the same time the greatest esteem and friendship exists between Captain Acton and myself, and his regard for me is sufficiently expressed by his placing me in command here. Do you follow me, sir?",
She listened to him with the immobility of a ship's figurehead. No astonishment at his extraordinary revelation of intention varied the expression of her face which remained as it was when she shrank from him. Truly a wonderful face, the face of an actress of[Pg 255] supreme genius, the face of the inheretrix of the surprising, most excellent art of her mother, the famous Kitty O'Hara. Still did she keep bare her beautiful teeth, still did the tension through the elongation of her sweet lips hold them bloodless, her eyes had lost in their expression their lovely quality of brooding. They stared, and the stare was that of madness. Her colour was gone. Apparently this delicate, fascinating, lovable, gentle girl, possessed powers of will and intellect which dominated Nature herself in her; and even as it is known of some, that they have been capable of arresting the pulsation of their heart and yet live, so obviously in this lady was an influence, a passion, a very wizardry of determination, which suffered her to drive the blood from her cheek, to narrow the eyelid till the eye had lost its familiar seeking and dwelling look, till the mouth took the form that was to convey the intention of the artist.,
As the second mate climbed the companion steps Mr Lawrence stood with his hand upon the table and his eyes fastened upon Lucy's door, thinking. It was clear he was hanging in the wind, as sailors say. He could head a boarding party, he could look a loaded cannon full in the muzzle, he could risk seizing the side-rope which was connected with a fuse for exploding the powder-room of a pirate that was to be boarded and taken; but he seemed to lack heart for such an enterprise as his opening of that door, and his entrance into that berth signified..
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