"Wait, my dear fellow, wait!" he exclaimed.  "What you have just told me affords me the opportunity to mention what Dona Inez and I have discussed together more than once, without any real hope, however, of being able to bring it to pass.  Now, however, I find that if you go back you must surrender yourself a prisoner, and be tried as a criminal for what was certainly no fault of yours, I will speak what is in my mind.  Why go back at all?  Why not give up the sea, remain here, and be my trusted friend and right-hand man in the management of the estate?  I very badly need some one like yourself, some one in whom I can place the most absolute trust; for the estate is altogether too big for me to manage single-handed; and my overseers, while they are good enough men in their way, and no doubt understand their business, are scarcely the kind of men whom I could put upon an equality with myself, or admit to the house and to intimacy with Dona Inez.  You, however, are different; you are a gentleman, and although an Englishman--"