chair up beside Alie and listened. Within five minutes, however, of my arrival he introduced Mr. Vesey's name, and instantly she stopped him by saying:
"Now, where have I heard that name before? It seems, somehow, to be very familiar to me."
"Perhaps you've heard the story of his abduction by the Beautiful White Devil," said Ebbington, who saw that I was about to speak and was anxious to forestall me.
"No, I guess not," answered Alie. "I reckon I was thinking of Klener W. Vesey, of Wall Street, who operates considerable in pork. But tell me, who is this Beautiful White Devil one hears so much about, anyway?"
There was a pause, but I held my peace and let Ebbington's tongue run riot with him.
"Ah! there you have me at a disadvantage," he began, pluming himself for the big speech I could see was imminent. "Some say she's a European lady of title gone mad on Captain Marryat and Clarke Russell. Others aver that she's not a woman at all, but a man disguised in woman's clothes. But the real truth, I'm inclined to fancy, is that she's the daughter of a drunken old desperado, once an English naval man, who for years made himself a terror in these seas."
When I heard him thus commit himself, I looked across at Alie, half expecting that she would lose control of herself and annihilate him upon the spot. But save a little twitching round the corners of her mouth, she allowed no sign of the wrath that I knew was raging within her breast to escape her. In a voice as steady as when she had inquired the way to Whampoa's Garden that morning, she continued her questions.
