"Lady Catharine of Bellamont, answer me in pity, by the love I bear you, by the troth you have plighted me! With all his insatiate avarice and thirst for blood, his moral baseness and his numerous crimes, does there not linger in the embers of your earlier passion one single spark a proper wind may kindle into flame?"
"There is deeper meaning beneath your words than floats upon the surface," she replied, with dignity; "my woman's pride should rise in my defence, and meet with scorn the foul suspicion that lurks beneath them! But I will excuse you. I will think you soured by the recent loss of your brig, and so forgive you."
"This is no answer, lady! This Lester or Kyd, I well know, loves you! Thinking me dead, he soon will press his suit. By soft words, vows, and deep protestations of innocence and promises of reform, will he seek to reinstate himself in your affections--if perchance they are forfeited! He is rich, noble, and smooth-tongued. I am, as now you see me, a shipwrecked mariner, with only my commission and my sword! Nay, you have even cast the loss of my vessel in my teeth!"
The handsome young man, with clouded brow, grieved and goaded spirit, turned away as he spoke, and, folding his arms, gazed moodily on the waves as they unrolled at his feet, tossing liquid diamonds upon the sand. Each word he uttered only served as weapons against him. Suspicion and jealousy will never turn back the current of woman's love if it has once flowed a contrary way. Gentleness will govern it and guide it; but violence opposed to it will, like a dam, convert it into an ungovernable cataract. The attachment between Kate Bellamont and Fitzroy was properly, so far as impassioned love was concerned, only on one side. Fitzroy, or Mark Meredith, had held her from youth in his eye as the star both of his ambition and his love; and when, by a fortuitous circumstance, five years after his departure as an humble lad from the fisherman's hut at Castle Cor, he found himself commander of the vessel destined to convey her to the New World, he, unrecognised by her, and under the name he had assumed, wooed her with diffidence, yet with the perseverance of a love that had strengthened with his strength and grown with his growth. She, in the mean while, was pleased by his attentions, flattered by his devotion, and not insensible to his love. She knew him only as Captain Fitzroy, who had been knighted for his gallantry on the sea, and whose youth only prevented him from attaining the highest rank in the navy. The earl (for the lovely Countess of Bellamont had deceased the year before) seconded the young hero's addresses, anticipating for the youthful knight the highest name and rank.