Venetia did not like this design, which she weighed in a quick mind, and saw to be beset with dangers on every hand. She saw a tangle of lies in which she might be doubted on either side, and she knew enough of the ways of war to guess that she would not long be safe from a knife drawn briskly across her throat, even from the hands of those she might be preferring to serve. Yet she did not look so downcast as he had thought she would, as she made her reply.
“You say you have spies enough, and, if they content you with what they tell, it is not my part to say they are less than good. Did they tell you much of the cannon by which you lost nine boats of ten, and, as the talk goes, more than a thousand lives? If they did, they were boats that were boldly led.”
Hassan looked at her with a qui
