"True," said the captain, "and loves the rascal in spite of it."
"Because, with a woman's generous devotion, she does not believe him false; she looks yet to have the mystery cleared up, and to find his honor untarnished."
"God grant it, for her sake," replied the captain.
"Amen!" exclaimed Perry; for in truth his love for Rose, surpassing the love of men, was capable even of this magnanimity.
"Shipwreck me!" exclaimed the captain, consoling himself with a bit of tobacco, "if I can make out how it is, that the finest women invariable throw themselves away on these good-for-nothing fellows. It is always so, Perry."
"Not always," said the doctor. "Not in your case, at least," and he grasped the captain's hand.
"Thank you--thank you," replied Captain Lucas, with emotion. "I believe my Mary is a happy wife."
And this was New Orleans! its hot breath swept across Rose's cheek, as she stood upon the deck of the Neptune, gazing upon its nearing spires, roofs, and chimneys. The city's distant hum even now falls upon her watchful ear. Amid its motley population should she find him whom she had come to seek? Would he take the pain from out her young heart? claim her, and his boy? or should she walk the crowded streets day by day, reading faces, measuring forms, listening to voices, and return at nightfall with eye, ear, and heart, dissatisfied.
She turned her head. "A few words with you," said Captain Lucas.
Ah--that was what she had been dreading, payment for her services, and they had been so slight, so interrupted by Charley's sickness, and so she told the captain with her usual ingenuousness, for she had begun to fear latterly that Captain Lucas had not needed them at all, and that his engagement with her was a delicate cover for his charity. But it was useless talking; the captain was as peremptory as if he were on quarter-deck among his sailors, instead of talking there in the cabin to a little woman four feet high; he said "he was in a hurry," he said (presenting her with Doctor Perry's roll of bills after he had himself paid her) that "that was a present from himself for Charley," and he said that as she was all alone, she must let an old man like him direct her where to find proper lodgings; so he penciled on a card the address of an old lady, whose quiet house he thought would just suit her; and then he said, kissing Charley, "God bless you both," and drew his hand across his eyes.