For as long as she could remember him, she had associated him with romance and drama.
To her he had been Raffles, the amateur cracksman.

He had also been Steerforth in David Copperfield--and time after time she had drowned him in the wreck.

In stories of buccaneers he was the captain--sometimes Captain Morgan, sometimes Captain Kidd--or else he was Black Jack with Dora in his power and trembling in the balance whether to become a hero or a villain.

As Mary grew older these associations not only lingered; they strengthened.
Not long before her father died she read in the paper of a young desperado, handsome and well-dressed, who held up a New York jeweller at the point of a gun and relieved him of five thousand dollars' worth of diamond rings.

The story was made remarkable by a detail.