CHAPTER X

Lady Elizabeth will keep her Word

 

The night fell on three of the most unhappy people in the world; yet to each had been vouchsafed a partial realization of a cherished hope. Coventry should have been luxuriating in the thought of his approaching marriage to the girl he loved; Elizabeth should have been overwhelmed with joy at the reappearance of O'Neill, after his long absence; and O'Neill during that time had asked for nothing but an opportunity to stand once more in the presence of his divinity. The desire of each had been granted, and yet all three were completely miserable.

Coventry, because he more than suspected that Elizabeth loved O'Neill; Elizabeth, because she felt that honor compelled her to marry Coventry, to whom she was deeply attached, but toward whom her feelings, she now found, were vastly different from those which had flooded her being with new life at the sight of the young Irishman. Her period of waiting and dreaming had unconsciously developed a passion for him which had broken all barriers at the mere sound of his voice, the sight of his face. As for O'Neill, he found her fairer than he had ever thought even in his most extravagant dreams, and it was in an agony of despair that he contemplated her as the bride of another. There was this saving grace in his position, however: he would probably be condemned to death forthwith, and he was in no mood to balk the executioner; if ever death be welcome, it would be so to him.

The only one who was completely at his ease, and who, in fact, extracted a certain satisfaction from the situation, was the admiral. Naturally he did not enter very deeply into the matrimonial schemes of the young, and with the indifference of the aged and the present, he doubted that it would be a matter of any great difficulty either to make Elizabeth forget, if necessary, the Irishman in whom even his obtuse vision had detected that she was greatly interested; or, in case it suited his purpose better, to make his son forget Elizabeth in the presence of some other charmer whom he might select. His purpose was, as ever, the paramount consideration with the admiral.

He had conceived a brilliant idea, which he fondly hoped would result, were it to be realized, in the capture of the notorious Paul Jones, who was the object of consuming desire on the part of every military and naval man in the three kingdoms. So enchanted was the old man with his own idea, and so desirous was he of bagging the game, that he would not have 

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