You didn't know ?" She shook her head without replying.

She had averted her face, and her eyes were staring down at the gently heaving water.

After a moment she spoke, her voice steady and perfectly controlled.
"But surely, if this were true, there would have been an end to his piracy by now.

If he...

if he loved a woman and was betrothed, and was also rich as you say, surely he would have abandoned this desperate life, and..." "Why, so I thought," his lordship interrupted, "until I had the explanation.