“‘The young sailor got a release from a part of his promise. He could not take the child himself, he did not wish to leave London just then; but he would send it by safe hands to a place where he could find it again. So the child went and the sailor remained, and bore the abuse of the affectionate father, who, enraged at the loss of his little daughter, accused the sailor of having stolen it. Still, wicked and depraved, the young man refused to admit the charge, and even when arrested and brought to the bar of justice managed to clear himself; so cleverly had he covered up the traces of his guilt.
“‘Well, time went by, and when the news of the baby’s safe arrival in a distant part reached the mother, she too set out on an unknown journey. The sailor saw her laid in the grave; then, he, amidst the maledictions of the man he had robbed, took his departure.
“‘His little _protégée_ was where he could see her occasionally in his voyages to and fro over the earth’s surface. She was quite happy, for the people who had taken her treated her as if she were their own child. This was by command of the wicked sailor, who wished the little girl to have a perfect childhood. But at last his villainy cropped out. He stole the child again--a woman now--away from her loving, adopted parents, put her in his ship, and sailed away with her as his father did with his mother, and’”--she concluded, dropping the paper and her stilted tone of narration at the same time--“‘he was actually foolish enough to imagine she was the sort of person who would stay where she was put.’”
“So she would,” he said, contentedly. “She would have stayed where she was put till the time came for the sailor to leave England; then she would have begged to be taken with him.”
“No, she would not; she would have gone to London.”
Captain Fordyce brought his hand down energetically on the table. “Nina, I would give a hundred pounds to have something startle you into saying, ‘I love you.’”
She made a hasty effort to change the subject.
“Tell me again how you happened to know papa and mama.”
“I was sent to them once to recuperate after having fever in a hospital,” he said, indulgently. “They lived on a farm in New York State then, and took boarders. Just after you were sent to them they moved to New Hampshire.”