He stamped his foot upon the ground, as though he would keep down some rising demon, and his voice once more resumed the hoarseness it had exchanged for something almost plaintive throughout his story.
“Ralph, Ralph,” began my Lady reprovingly, and touching his rough sailor's sleeve with her gloved hand----
“And how the devil should you know my name is Ralph?” interrupted the other in blank amazement.
“My maid, Mary Forest, told me it was Ralph,” returned my Lady calmly.
“Did she? Well, that's no reason why _you_ should call me by it. However, since you seem to feel so unexpected an interest in your humble servant, I will make bold to ask a favour of you.” His manner was rough and defiant as ever now, like that of a sturdy vagrant soliciting alms of a defenceless woman.
“You are angry with yourself,” said my Lady quietly, “for having given way to feelings which do you honour; that is a base sort of regret indeed. You try to persuade yourself that I have affected a sympathy which I did not feel, but you do not succeed. I cannot but be interested in one who, with all his faults, has certainly in the hour of death and danger behaved nobly, and who must, I feel assured, have the seeds of good in him yet, despite his wild and despairing talk.”
“No, woman, I have not,” returned the man with vehemence. “Dismiss that from your mind at once. Ralph Derrick is no hypocrite, whatever he is, and he tells you now that he is a lost man, in the sense which such as you understand it. I don't know why I have spoken to you as I have done just now--some springs of feeling that I had deemed were quite dried up flowed at your voice as they have not done these thirty years--but don't imagine that I am soft-hearted. I am not a bad fellow when I'm sober, and not put out; but then I'm seldom sober, and I'm very easily put out. Your son, Sir Richard, has put me out, for one. I should be sorry for him if he and I had much to do with one another.--But there, you need not turn so pale; for, for your sake--and for Master Walter's sake, who has got my Lucy's eyes, and look, and voice, God bless him--Sir Richard is safe from me; albeit I have let fly a bullet before now at men who have wronged me less than he has done--an insolent young devil! It was a man like him, one of your landowners, forsooth, whose persecution drove me from my native shore, and drowned my wife and the old couple. Damn all such tyrants, says Ralph Derrick”----