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Title: A crown of shame, volume 2 (of 3)

Author: Florence Marryat

Release date: February 2, 2025 [eBook #75275]

Language: English

Original publication: London: F. V. White & Co, 1888

Credits: Emmanuel Ackerman, David E. Brown, Chris Corrigan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CROWN OF SHAME, VOLUME 2 (OF 3) ***





  A CROWN OF SHAME.

  VOL. II.




  A CROWN OF SHAME.

  _A NOVEL._

  BY
  FLORENCE MARRYAT,

  AUTHOR OF
  ‘LOVE’S CONFLICT,’ ‘MY SISTER THE ACTRESS,’
  ETC. ETC.

  _IN THREE VOLUMES._

  VOL. II.

  LONDON:
  F. V. WHITE & CO.,
  31 SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C.

  1888.

  [_All rights reserved._]




  EDINBURGH
  COLSTON AND COMPANY
  PRINTERS




[Illustration]

_CONTENTS._


                    PAGE

  CHAPTER I.           1

  CHAPTER II.         26

  CHAPTER III.        50

  CHAPTER IV.         81

  CHAPTER V.         106

  CHAPTER VI.        137

  CHAPTER VII.       157

  CHAPTER VIII.      193

  CHAPTER IX.        213




A CROWN OF SHAME.




POPULAR NEW NOVELS.


_Now ready, in One Vol., the Seventh Edition of_

  =ARMY SOCIETY; or, Life in a Garrison Town.= By JOHN STRANGE WINTER.
    Author of ‘Bootles’ Baby.’ Cloth gilt, 6s.; also picture boards, 2s.


_Also now ready, in cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. each._

  =GARRISON GOSSIP, Gathered in Blankhampton.= By JOHN STRANGE WINTER.
    Also picture boards, 2s.

  =IN THE SHIRES.= By Sir RANDAL H. ROBERTS, Bart.

  =THE OUTSIDER.= By HAWLEY SMART.

  =THE GIRL IN THE BROWN HABIT.= By Mrs EDWARD KENNARD.

  =STRAIGHT AS A DIE.= By the same Author.

  =BY WOMAN’S WIT.= By Mrs ALEXANDER. Author of ‘The Wooing O’t.’

  =KILLED IN THE OPEN.= By Mrs EDWARD KENNARD.

  =IN A GRASS COUNTRY.= By Mrs H. LOVETT-CAMERON.

  =A DEVOUT LOVER.= By the same Author.

  =TWILIGHT TALES.= By Mrs EDWARD KENNARD. _Illustrated._

  =SHE CAME BETWEEN.= By Mrs ALEXANDER FRASER.

  =THE CRUSADE OF ‘THE EXCELSIOR.’= By BRET HARTE.

  =A REAL GOOD THING.= By Mrs EDWARD KENNARD.

  =CURB AND SNAFFLE.= By Sir RANDAL H. ROBERTS, Bart.

  =DREAM FACES.= By the Hon. Mrs FETHERSTONHAUGH.

  =A SIEGE BABY.= By JOHN STRANGE WINTER.

  =MONA’S CHOICE.= By Mrs ALEXANDER. Author of ‘The Wooing O’t.’


  F. V. WHITE & Co., 31 Southampton Street, Strand,
  London, W.C.




[Illustration]

A CROWN OF SHAME.




CHAPTER I.


He left Liz weeping over the dead body of her father. How paltry all
other troubles seemed to be, as she did so. She had no power, at
that moment, to realise any fact but one,--that he had left her, and
without a warning. He, who had been her sole protector and companion,
beside whom she had walked every moment of her life, sharing his
knowledge, and his duties, and his cares, had gone forth into the
dreamland without her, and for the future she must struggle through
life as best she might, alone. Liz was not ignorant of the cause of
her father’s death, but she had been quite unprepared for it. She had
known for some time past that he had a weak heart, but men lived with
such, sometimes to their three score years and ten. He had passed a
tranquil and unexciting life. The passions which had raged stormily
perhaps in his youth had forsaken him in his latter days, and he had
appeared likely to live on to a good old age. But the events of the
last week had greatly upset him. Liz had no doubt, as she looked at his
pale, calm features, that his sudden death lay, in a great measure,
at Maraquita’s door, and the fact did not make her feel more tenderly
towards her adopted sister. But the infant was wailing in her arms,
and she felt that something must be done at once. This was no time for
weeping, or inaction. She turned on her heel, with set features, and
teeth closely clenched together, and passed into the outer room to
summon her negress attendant Chloe to her aid. Chloe was conspicuous
only by her absence, but on the threshold of the outer door she found
the yellow girl, Rosa, slowly rocking herself to and fro.

‘What are you doing here?’ demanded Lizzie sternly. ‘Have you not
brought me into enough trouble already?’

The girl turned round and caught the folds of her dress, and buried
her face in them, crying. The coloured people are very emotional, and
a sudden remorse had stabbed the depths of poor Rosa’s heart.

‘Oh, Miss Lizzie,’ she sobbed, ‘I’se so sorry the poor Doctor dead!
Massa Courcelles tell me so as he went out. The dear good Doctor, who
was so berry kind to me in my sickness, and so good to my little Carlo,
and now he gone too, and me nebber see him any more, and my heart is
broke, Miss Liz, my heart is broke!’

This tribute to her dead father’s virtues affected Liz more than
anything else could have done.

‘If _you_ are so sorry for his loss, Rosa,’ she answered gently,
‘what do you suppose _I_ must feel. I seem to have lost everything
to-day--_everything_,’ she added, in a vague and weary tone.

‘Oh, Missy Liz, I’se so sorry!’ repeated Rosa. ‘But what can I do to
help you, and to take some of dis trouble off you? Let me do something,
Missy Liz, to show I’se real sorry.’

‘You can go up to the White House, Rosa, and tell Mr Courtney
of--of--_this_, and say I should like to see him as soon as he can come
to me. I can’t find Chloe anywhere.’

‘Ah! dat Chloe no good. She too stupid!’ cried Rosa, with all a
negress’s jealousy. ‘And may I come back, too, Missy Liz, with Massa
Courtney, and help you nurse the baby, same as you helped me with
little Carlo?’

The allusion to the child brought the trouble it had caused her too
vividly to Lizzie’s mind. She dropped into a chair, and burst into
tears.

‘Oh, Rosa! Rosa! you have spoiled my life for me. How could you be so
cruel?’

The yellow girl crawled on her knees to the side of the Doctor’s
daughter.

‘Missy Liz, what I done so bad? Isn’t dat baby your own baby, then?’

‘Of course it isn’t! How could you think such a thing of me? It is a
little nurse-child which was left in charge of my dear father, and I
was minding it for him. But you made Monsieur de Courcelles believe
that it belongs to me, and you have parted us for ever. He was to have
been my husband, Rosa, but he never will be so now; never--never!’

Rosa’s eyes opened with surprise.

‘Missy Liz, you must tell him I’se a liar. I know noting of de baby,
only I see it on your bed, and I’se so sorry I speak to Massa
Courcelles about it. It was de debbil spoke, Missy Liz, and not me.
Something seem to come in my head and say dat chile like my little
Carlo, and you no better den me. But I see now I’se all wrong, and you
too good to do such a drefful thing. You tell Massa Courcelles I’se a
liar, and it’ll be all right again, Missy Liz.’

‘No, Rosa, it will never be right again in the way you mean. I _did_
tell Monsieur de Courcelles what you say, but he refused to believe me.
No one will believe me now, I am afraid,’ said Liz mournfully, ‘and I
must bear the brunt of my own rash promise.’

‘Oh! Missy Liz, must you keep dat baby dat isn’t yours, and take de
trouble of it all your life?’

‘I think so, Rosa. I have nowhere to send it; and you would not have me
turn it out on the cold world alone? No, my dear dead father left it
to me as a sacred charge,’ cried Lizzie, weeping, ‘and I will guard it,
whatever it may cost me. It will be something to do for his sake.’

‘Oh, Miss Lizzie!’ exclaimed Rosa, awed by a display of heroism she
could not understand, ‘you berry good woman! I nebber know till dis day
how good a woman you are. Let me stay with you, Miss Lizzie. Send dat
Chloe back to huts, and let me be your servant, ’stead of her. Chloe
don’t know nuffin of children. _She_ not had a little boy, like me. Let
me nurse dat baby for you, and I will be faithful, trust me, Missy Liz,
and nebber let de debbil speak through my mouth again.’

‘I believe you, Rosa,’ replied Lizzie. ‘I believe you are sorry for the
mischief you have done, and that you would undo it if you could. You
were a good mother to little Carlo, and you would be a kind nurse to
this poor little one. If it can be managed, it shall be arranged so,
but we can do nothing without the leave of Mr Courtney. Go now and tell
him of the grief I am in, and we will talk of these things another day.’

‘But I will come back and hold de baby for you, Missy Liz!’ exclaimed
the yellow girl, as she set off towards the White House.

Liz walked back into the death chamber, and mechanically performed
the necessary offices to prepare her father’s body for the grave. She
did not weep again as she did so. The blow of her two great losses,
coming so quickly one upon the other, had stunned her, and dried up
the sources of her tears. She would have time to think and weep, she
thought, by-and-by. When Mr Courtney arrived post-haste in answer to
her summons, his grief appeared to be scarcely less than her own. He
had been sincerely and deeply attached to this erring friend of his
youthful days, and had never anticipated losing him so soon. He shed
tears freely over the silent corpse, and kept on assuring Lizzie that
her future should be one of his first cares.

‘Don’t let that trouble you, my dear,’ he reiterated. ‘I looked upon
your dear father as my brother, and you shall never miss his protection
whilst I can extend it to you. From this moment, Lizzie, I shall regard
you as my daughter, and as soon as the sad ceremonies which we must go
through, are concluded, I shall carry you off to the White House, and
consider you second only in my affection to Maraquita.’

‘Dear Mr Courtney, you are too good to me,’ gasped Lizzie,
‘but--but--please don’t speak of my future to me to-day.’

‘No, no, of course not. It was thoughtless of me,’ said the planter;
‘but I did it with the view to set your mind at ease. To-day we must
give up entirely to thoughts of my dear and valued friend.’

He imagined that the girl’s mind was too distracted to dwell on
anything but her great loss; but Lizzie had remembered that before the
morrow, the scandal that was being spread abroad concerning her would
reach his ears, and render her unfit in his eyes to be the companion of
his daughter.

When he had told her what arrangements he had made for the funeral,
which (according to the custom in hot climates) was to take place that
evening, Mr Courtney, with a farewell grasp of his dead friend’s hand,
turned to leave the bungalow, when his eye fell upon the yellow girl,
Rosa, squatting on the floor with the baby in her arms.

‘What infant is that?’ he demanded indifferently, for it was so wrapped
up in flannel that he could not see its face.

Liz had anticipated the question, and dreaded it; but she felt evasion
would be useless, and had not attempted to send the child out of his
sight.

‘It is a little girl which was confided to my dear father’s care,’ she
answered, in a low voice. ‘And he was going to consult Dr Martin at the
Fort about a nurse to take the charge of it, when he was called away.’

Mr Courtney’s eyes opened somewhat at her explanation.

‘Is it a white child then?’ he asked.

‘Yes, it is a white child,’ replied Lizzie, with a deep sigh, as she
stood trembling at what might follow. But Mr Courtney said no more on
the subject. Perhaps his mind was too full of his lost friend to think
of minor things, anyway he left the bungalow without another word or
look, and Lizzie breathed more freely when he had gone. She spent the
remainder of the day beside the remains of the father whom she had
loved so well, and when the sun had sunk in the west, and the cool sea
breezes commenced to blow over San Diego, she followed his coffin to
the little European burial ground, which was situated on the top of a
hill, and in full view of the glorious ocean. She saw that there were
many friends, both white and coloured, gathered round the open grave
but she was in no fit condition to recognise who they were. Only, as
the last words of the solemn service were concluded, and she heard the
sods of earth rattle on the coffin lid, and felt as if she must throw
herself in with them, and be buried with all she loved best in this
world, she found some one supporting her failing steps on either side,
and looking up saw she was standing between Mr Courtney and Captain
Norris.

‘Come, my dear child,’ whispered the former. ‘It is all over now. Let
us see you safely to your home.’

They led her between them back to the empty bungalow, and the three
friends sat down together in the sitting-room, whilst Rosa squatted
in the verandah with Maraquita’s baby in her arms. Liz, making an
effort to battle with her emotion, busied herself with setting some
light refreshment before her guests. Mr Courtney drank a glass of iced
sherbet in silence, and then cleared his throat as though to force
himself to speak.

‘Lizzie, my dear, I have a good deal to say to you, and I wish to say
it now. I might leave it till to-morrow, but I think it will do you
good to fix your mind at once upon business, and to settle what you are
to do in the future.’

Lizzie turned a little paler than she had been. She had understood her
future to be settled that morning. But she guessed why it required
further explanation now.

‘Captain Norris, than whom I think your dear father had no warmer
friend, has been talking to me on the subject this afternoon, and has
consented to become the guardian and trustee of your interests.’

‘I am of age,’ interrupted Lizzie, with open eyes; ‘I require no
guardian.’

‘Stop, my dear, and let me finish what I have to say. You may not
require a personal guardian, but your monetary interests may need
looking after. I am not likely to forget you at my death, Lizzie.’

‘Indeed, Mr Courtney, you are too good to me,’ said Liz,--‘as you were
to my poor father,’ she added, in a lower voice.

‘Your father was my dearest friend: I can never forget that,’ replied
the planter; ‘and I am only following the dictates of my affection
for him in making a suitable provision for his daughter. I have been
thinking the matter over deeply, Lizzie, and I have decided that I
cannot spare you from amongst my coolies. Why should you not carry on
the work from which your father has been so suddenly called away? I
know you are competent to do so, from what he himself has told me, and
in any difficult cases you can always call in the assistance of the
Doctor from the Fort. What I propose is that you should continue to
live in this bungalow (the furniture and effects of which I shall make
over to you as your own property), and to work amongst the coloured
people; and I will gladly pay you the same remuneration as heretofore.
Don’t you think it will be the best plan, Lizzie, and that you will be
happier if you bravely try to forget your grief, in carrying on a life
of activity and usefulness?’

‘I am _sure_ it will be best,’ she answered, in a low tone.

Her pride, which had made her divine at once the cause of her
benefactor’s change of mind, would have also prompted her to refuse his
offers of assistance, but she was helpless in the matter. She had no
friends to go to, no resources to fall back upon. What could she have
done, left alone in San Diego, but live on charity, which she would
rather have died than accept? Mr Courtney’s proposal was at least not a
humiliating one. He offered her money in return for her labour, and she
was resolved to earn it, and thanked Heaven she was capable of doing
so. That he should not even have alluded to his promise of the morning
wounded but did not surprise her. He had heard the wretched slander,
which was doubtless already going the round of the plantation,
concerning her. Henri de Courcelles had, perhaps, repeated it, and Mr
Courtney already regretted that he had held out hopes he could not
fulfil. Well, he should not read her disappointment in her eyes. She
would put a brave face on the matter, and battle (as best she could)
for herself; for the oath she had taken to her dead father was doubly
sacred, now that all hope of release from it was over.

‘We will do all in our power to make your life comfortable,’ continued
Mr Courtney; ‘and you may always depend on me, Lizzie, as your friend.’

He did not include his wife’s and daughter’s friendship with his own,
and Lizzie noticed the omission, and shrunk under it.

‘Mr Courtney,’ she said, in a firm voice, though her eyes were full of
tears, ‘I thank you for your offers of assistance, and I accept them
gratefully. I did not know till a few days back, the whole extent to
which my poor father was indebted to you, but I shall never forget it,
and if I can ever repay it in the slightest degree, I will.’

‘Hush, my dear! It was nothing. Don’t speak of it now.’

‘It was his _life_, Mr Courtney, and I should not be his daughter were
I unmindful of it. I should have liked to relieve you of the burden,
now _he_ is gone, but I don’t know what I could do, without friends,
and in a foreign country. So I will remain on (as you are good enough
to propose), and work among your plantation hands, and do all I
possibly can to return your kindness to us both.’

‘Lizzie, my dear, I don’t wish you to think of it as if it were a
favour. The obligation is quite as much on my side. And you mustn’t
speak of yourself as friendless, either, my dear. You have friends on
all sides, I am sure of that. You know what _I_ feel towards you; and
here is Captain Norris, grieving only second to myself for your loss;
and every one in San Diego loves and respects you. You may take my word
for that, Lizzie.’

Mr Courtney had risen, as if to take his departure, whilst he spoke,
and now stood in the doorway, with his straw hat in his hand, and
beckoned her towards him.

‘By the way,’ he added, in a lower tone, ‘what do you intend to do
about that child, Lizzie?’ jerking his head towards Rosa and the baby.

‘What should I do about it?’ she returned. ‘I know no place to send it
to. It was in the charge of Mammy Lila, but she died of the fever. I
suppose I must keep it here.’

‘Where are its parents?’ demanded the planter inquisitively.

‘It has none, Mr Courtney, or none who will own it.’

‘Dear me! That is very strange, and very awkward. Who confided it to
your father’s care?’

‘I am not at liberty to tell you, sir.’

‘Do you know then?’

She paused for a moment, and then answered, in a husky tone,--

‘Yes.’

‘And you will not tell me, Lizzie?’

‘I am bound under a solemn oath, Mr Courtney, not to reveal anything
about that child, and I must beg of you not to question me.’

‘It looks bad for you, my dear, and may be the cause of a great deal of
future unhappiness. There are not so many Europeans on the island that
such an event can occur without comment; and if you persist in holding
your tongue on the subject, people _will_ talk about it, and to your
disadvantage.’

‘Then they _must_ talk, Mr Courtney,’ replied Lizzie boldly, though she
had turned very pale. ‘I cannot break my promise to my father, for any
consideration, not even to save my reputation.’

‘Lizzie,’ whispered the planter presently, ‘promise me at least to send
the child away. Let _me_ send it away for you. You don’t know _what_
people are saying about you. Even De Courcelles has heard the rumour,
and came to me for an explanation of it. I will ask you no questions,
my dear, but let me help you in the matter by sending the infant to one
of the sister islands. I cannot bear to think that any one should dare
to say a word against you, for your father’s sake.’

‘You are very kind, Mr Courtney, but I have made up my mind on this
subject, and the child will remain with me. Sending her away now to the
care of a hireling, will not remove the stain her presence here has
cast upon my character; and I have reasons for wishing to bring her up
myself. If you object to it, I will relieve you of the burden of both
of us; but that infant is my father’s last charge to me, and I will
keep it.’

‘If you would only trust _me_ with the secret of its birth, I could
fight your battle with you,’ said Mr Courtney sadly.

‘I will trust no one, sir. I have lost all that I cared for in this
world, through its means, and I will at least have the satisfaction of
knowing that I have remained true to myself.’

‘Very well, my dear; good-night; and remember I am still your friend,’
replied the planter, as he walked slowly away.

Lizzie looked after him for a moment, and then returning to the
apartment, and regardless of the presence of Hugh Norris, she flung
herself into a chair, and burst into a flood of tears.

‘_Still my friend!_’ she repeated. ‘Yes, but a friend without any trust
or confidence left in me. Ah! what is the use of his assurances? I can
read his heart too well! I have not a friend left in the world.’

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER II.


As she said the words, Captain Norris sprang towards her.

‘_Not a friend left in the world_, Liz! Oh! how can you say such a
cruel thing whilst I am here?’

She could not answer him immediately for weeping, but she stretched
forth her hand and laid it on his arm.

‘Forgive me, Captain Norris. I know that you are my friend, but grief
makes us all selfish. Yet that they should think such a thing of
me,--that even Mr Courtney, who has known me from a little child,
should suspect me of so unworthy an action, it is bitterly, _bitterly_
hard.’

‘You are speaking in riddles to me, Lizzie! Of _what_ do they suspect
you? Surely of nothing of which you need be ashamed? If so, they
must answer to _me_ for it. Your dead father honoured me with his
friendship, and no one shall insult his daughter whilst I am able to
prevent it.’

‘I should have known that I might count upon your championship,
Captain Norris; but it is useless. I have entangled myself in a net
from which I see no prospect of freedom. You must leave me to bear the
consequences by myself.’

‘I shall do no such thing!’ replied the Captain warmly. ‘What is the
worth of friendship if it cannot stand by you in the time of need?
Confide in me, Lizzie. Tell me your trouble, and let us devise a way
out of it together.’

‘We cannot do that,’ replied Lizzie mournfully; ‘but you shall hear it,
all the same. If I did not tell you, San Diego would soon do so. All
the hands are talking of it by this time. Even that yellow girl in the
verandah is ready to believe me to have fallen to a level with herself.’

‘You alarm me!’ exclaimed Hugh Norris. ‘What is it they dare to say of
you?’

‘That that child is mine!’

‘_What_ child? I did not know there was a child here.’

‘You are the last to hear of it then,’ replied Lizzie bitterly. ‘The
smallest lad on the plantation has discussed it before now. I mean the
infant which Rosa has in her arms. It is _not_ mine! I hope you will
believe me when I say so. But I have no means of proving the truth of
what I say.’

‘You surprise me beyond measure,’ said Captain Norris. ‘In what does
the difficulty lie, and why cannot you appeal to the real parents to
help you out of it?’

‘Captain Norris, you must not question me too closely, lest I should
betray a secret I have sworn to keep. Be satisfied with what I tell
you. It was only yesterday my father gave me that child to nurse for
him. He asked me to keep it through the night, and in the morning he
would get a proper person to take charge of it. You have heard the
sequel. By the morning, God had called him away, and I am left with
this burden on my hands for ever!’

‘But, Lizzie, forgive me if I do not follow you. What reason is there
for your keeping the child? What interest had your father in it? Why
should you not send it to the people he intended to entrust it to?’

‘Perhaps I might have done so if this suspicion had not fallen upon me;
but _now_, what would be the use of it? Absent or present, the child
will be regarded as mine. I shall have to bear the stigma; I may as
well have the satisfaction of knowing I have fulfilled my dead father’s
wishes.’

‘Do you know who are the parents of the child?’

Lizzie was silent.

‘I see that you do. Surely they will never permit you innocently to
bear this awful shame?’

‘Captain Norris, when my father first showed me that child, he
extracted a solemn oath from me never to reveal anything I knew or
might guess concerning it. It is useless your questioning me. My tongue
is tied, and whatever my silence may cost me, I am bound to endure.’

‘But surely your lover, De Courcelles, does not believe this slanderous
lie about you, Lizzie? _He_ will stand up in your defence, whatever the
world may say, and fight it with you?’

‘Oh, don’t talk of him! Don’t mention his name!’ cried Lizzie, with a
sudden burst of grief. ‘He _does_ believe it, Captain Norris, and he
has cast me off. We are parted for ever. Our engagement is at an end.’

‘The cur!’ exclaimed Norris contemptuously.

‘You shall not call him so! What else could he do?’ rejoined Lizzie
hastily. ‘What would _you_ do, if the woman you had engaged yourself to
marry, proved to be a wanton? You would say she was not fit to be your
wife, and you would be right. Until this stigma is lifted off me, I am
not fit to become the wife of any honest man.’

‘But it does not rest upon you, in _my_ estimation,’ replied her
companion. ‘I do not believe it; no one should ever make me do so
except yourself. I would take your word against that of a thousand
witnesses, Lizzie.’

‘Thank you, thank you!’ she exclaimed, reddening with pleasure at the
sound of his honest voice. ‘You are indeed a friend in the time of
need. But Monsieur de Courcelles thinks otherwise. He has told me to
my face that unless I will divulge the names of the parents of this
child, everything between us must be at an end. And so it is at an end.
I cannot break my word to the dead. Besides--there are other reasons
why I should be true to my trust.’

‘You will at least tell me one thing, Lizzie. You know to whom this
child belongs, do you not? I ask it in your own interests.’

‘I do.’

‘Then go to them, my dear, and tell them the dilemma in which the
promise you have given on their account has placed you. Ask them to
release you from it. Surely no one could be so inhuman as to desire
their shame (for I presume shame is at the bottom of this mystery) to
spoil the life of an innocent woman? Oh! if I only knew their names
myself, I would proclaim them far and wide, until I forced them to
release you from this cruel bondage.’

‘It is _impossible_, Captain Norris!’

‘Impossible for you to go to them?’

‘Impossible that my going could do any good in the matter. I cannot rid
myself of the blame, without shifting it on the shoulders of another,
and that my oath forbids me to do. Pray leave me, Captain Norris.
Leave me to bear it as best I may--_alone_! You heard what Mr Courtney
has kindly proposed,--that I shall live on here, and continue my dear
father’s work. I mean to do so, and if God spares the child, it shall
live with me. The coloured people will not despise us. They have too
many of such cases amongst themselves, and for the rest, I am strong
enough to suffer without sinking under it.’

‘But not _alone_, dear Lizzie!’ exclaimed Hugh Norris, taking her
hand. ‘If your engagement to Monsieur de Courcelles is indeed broken
off, let me speak again. You would not listen to me last week on _his_
account; listen to me now on your own. Come to me, and let me fight the
battle of life for all three of us--you and me and the child. If it
were _really_ your child, Lizzie, I should say the same. When I told
you I loved you, I did not mean that I loved some ideal creature raised
from my own imagination, but _you_--yourself, with all your faults (if
you have faults) and follies (which cannot be greater than my own), and
am willing to condone everything, for the privilege of loving you. Let
me try to make you forget this sorrow. In England, amidst new scenes
and new friends, you may learn to feel differently, even towards me,
and look back on San Diego as a bad dream, that has passed away for
ever.’

Lizzie pressed his hand gratefully.

‘How good you are to me,’ she answered, ‘and how true! I am sure you
will make the best and most loving of husbands, and some woman will be
very happy with you. But that woman will not be _me_! I would not wrong
you, my dear friend, by accepting your generous proposal. Why should
I cast this shadow over your honourable life, or profess to offer you
a heart not worthy of your acceptance? I love Henri de Courcelles!
Ah! don’t shrink from me. I know he is unworthy and unjust, nor can I
believe he has ever really cared for me; but he managed to win my love,
and I cannot take it back from him so suddenly. By-and-by, perhaps,
when this wound is somewhat healed, and time has enabled me to see
more clearly, I shall be strong enough to shake off the fascination
that enthralls me; but just now, I can only weep over its decay, as
I weep over the grave of my lost father. And so you see how utterly
unworthy I am of the noble offer you have made me.’

‘Not in _my_ eyes,’ persisted Hugh Norris. ‘I can never think of you
but as the dearest and most self-sacrificing of women, and I shall keep
the place in my heart open for you to my life’s end. But I will worry
you no further now. Only say if I can do anything for you, Lizzie,
before I go.’

‘Nothing,’ she sighed. ‘Unless it be to come to see me again, and
comfort me as you have done to-day.’

His face brightened with pleasure at her proposal, and he acceded to it
joyfully.

‘I will come up to-morrow if it will not be too soon,’ he answered. ‘I
have not landed my coolies yet, and the _Trevelyan_ may be in port for
some weeks yet.’

‘How is that?’ demanded Lizzie.

‘On account of this fever, and also of the town riots. My consignee
is afraid of both moral and physical infection. There was an attack
planned on Government House last night, and only just discovered in
time. The rebels had laid a train of gunpowder right under the state
rooms. There would have been a fearful sacrifice of life had they
succeeded.’

‘How terrible! Were they caught?’

‘Unfortunately they were not, for they got off to the Alligator Swamp
as soon as the alarm was given. And no one dares follow them there: the
danger is too great. They are watching outside it, however, and as
soon as they come out, they will be killed or arrested.’

‘Poor creatures,’ said Liz, with a shudder, ‘they will not be able
to hold out long. Twelve hours in the Alligator Swamp is said to be
certain death. Its poisonous atmosphere kills all those who escape the
alligators. It is too fearful to think of.’

‘Yes, I fancy the poor devils will be forced to surrender, and they
will get no quarter from the Governor, Sir Russell Johnstone. He is
in a great state of alarm about himself, and resolved to stamp the
insurrection out at any cost.’

‘One cannot blame him. It is a case in which the few must suffer for
the many. Is the Governor a nice man, Captain Norris?’

‘So-so. A very ordinary-looking Englishman,--more fit to till his own
acres, I should imagine, than to govern a colony. He has certainly done
little as yet to quell the ill-feeling in San Diego, which seems to be
increasing every day. But I shall not be able to keep my coolies on
board much longer. There are six hundred of them, and I shall not be
sorry when their backs are turned. I have had enough of their company
on the way from Calcutta.’

‘But they will make a bad exchange, I expect, from the hold of the
_Trevelyan_ to the cotton and sugar plantations. I have heard poor
father say you spoil your coolies, Captain Norris, and make them quite
dissatisfied with their reception in the West Indies.’

‘Oh, that’s a libel!’ cried the young man, smiling. ‘I may have tried
to make their life aboard ship as little irksome as possible, but it
has gone no further. But I am afraid they are mostly shipped under
false pretences, and led to expect less work and more pay than they are
ever likely to get in these islands. Their existence, at the best, is
hardly worth living.’

‘You are right there, and no one who has dwelt amongst them, as I have,
could fail to sympathise with their troubles. They have much to bear,
and little to compensate them for it. And with all their faults, they
are a patient people, although very impulsive. That poor girl in the
verandah did me a bad turn this morning, but she is ready to break her
heart about it now.’

‘Ah, Missy Liz, I’se _so_ sorry!’ cried Rosa, who had overheard the
words that concerned herself.

‘But you can’t undo the mischief, you see, Rosa, so try and make up for
it by being a faithful servant to your mistress now,’ said Hugh Norris,
as he passed over the threshold on his way home.

The yellow girl did not take correction from a stranger very well. She
shrugged her shoulders, and pulled a face after the retreating form of
Captain Norris, as she entered the bungalow with her infant charge.

‘What business of that Massa Norris to speak me?’ she inquired,
pouting. ‘If he want to scold some one, he’d better go and find
dat coolie girl Judy, what took the baby first. She’s a berry bad
girl--rude and impident--with a tongue as long as an alligator’s.’

‘Do you mean Mammy Lila’s granddaughter?’ inquired Lizzie. ‘When did
you see her, Rosa?’

‘Oh! she’s big enough to be seen, Missy Liz, and she’s just as cunning
as they’re made. Judy has left Shanty Hill now, and come to live
alongside of her own people, and dis morning Massa Courcelles has given
her work on the plantation. And dat gal’s tongue--how it _do_ run!’

‘About _me_, I suppose?’ said Liz bitterly.

‘Yes, Missy Liz--that’s just it--about you. Judy tells every one how
you went up to Shanty Hill in the middle of the night wid dis poor
little baby in your arms, and how you was so ill and weak you nearly
tumbled down on de floor; and Mammy Lila took de baby, and you tell
her, “_Silence and secrecy_,” which means, “Don’t tell nuffin to nobody
on your life.”’

‘And every one believes it was my own baby I took to Mammy Lila, Rosa,
the same as you did?’

‘What _can_ they believe, Missy Liz? I didn’t know what to believe
myself. Dere’s not too many quite white babies knocking about de
island, you know, and dis little one has no coloured blood in it. Dat’s
plain to be seen. And dat Judy is so impident. She’d say anything. She
says she skeered you so when she brought the baby back agin when Mammy
Lila died, dat you nearly fainted, and it was de shock and de trouble
that has killed de poor Doctor right away.’

‘Well, well, Rosa, don’t speak of it any more at present. It turns my
heart sick to hear it. Take the infant into my room, and put it to bed.
Judy’s talk, however untrue, can do me no further harm; and you mustn’t
forget, whilst judging her, that you thought and said pretty much the
same yourself.’

‘Ah, yes, Missy Liz; but den I’se berry sorry, and I’ll be a good gal
to you now,’ replied Rosa, with the nigger’s ready excuse for anything
they may have done wrong.

‘And I believe you, so let the matter rest,’ said Lizzie, as the yellow
girl disappeared with the baby, and she sat down at the table, resting
her head upon her hand.

What a difference twenty-four hours had made in her life! Twenty-four
hours ago she had possessed a father who loved her, a lover who
respected her, friends who believed in her, a good name and a spotless
reputation. Now, she seemed to have lost everything at one fell blow.
Her father was gone, her lover lost, her friends stood afar off. She
was publicly spoken of as an unmarried mother, and Maraquita’s sin
was laid at her door. And she had no means of repudiating the scandal.
Nothing but her bare word stood between her reputation and the world.
Who would believe her? What woman would _not_ deny such a crushing
shame?

Her solemn oath to her father, the fathomless obligation under which
they stood to Mr Courtney, the awful consequences to their benefactor
which must follow a revelation of the truth, stared Lizzie in the face,
like giant obstacles that forbid her even attempting to surmount them.
What would she and her dead father have been but for the generosity
extended to them through life by the planter’s hand?

He, a felon and a convict, and _she_, the daughter of a disgraced and
dishonoured man, pointed at by the finger of scorn, shunned by the
community of the virtuous and honest, a pariah and an outcast amongst
men. No wonder her father had exacted her silence and obedience at the
price of her salvation.

But would Maraquita be so untrue to all the instincts of honour and
justice as to permit her adopted sister to continue to bear the shame
which rightly belonged to herself? Liz remembered Hugh Norris’s advice
to her to seek out the parents of the child, and beg them to clear her
good name in the eyes of the world. The counsel was good. She only knew
of Quita as the mother of the infant; but she could, at all events,
secure an interview with her, and implore her to confess the truth to
Mr and Mrs Courtney, and relieve her from so intolerable a burthen.
Surely, thought Lizzie, if Quita knew what she was suffering--and
likely to suffer--she could not have the heart to refuse her! Little
Quita, whom she had held in her arms as a baby herself--who had learned
to walk clinging to her hand--who had shared her girlish pleasures
and sorrows with her, and told her all her secrets (except this last
terrible one)--surely _Quita_ would never blast her whole future in
order to shield herself from the consequences of her sin!

Perhaps she did not know about Henri de Courcelles! Liz had loved this
man too deeply to talk upon the subject; and as the engagement had
never been publicly ratified, Quita might not be aware of the cruel
separation her guilt had caused between them. If she knew _that_--if
she were told that some one whom Liz loved as fondly as ever _she_
could have loved the father of her child must be given up for ever,
unless she spoke out--surely she would muster up courage to remove the
heavy load she had laid upon her childhood’s friend.

As Lizzie arrived at this conclusion, she lifted up her head and
breathed more freely. A light was breaking through her darkness.
Perhaps, after all, she had condemned her adopted sister too hastily,
and should have waited to see her before she passed judgment. The
time had been too short, and events had been too hurried, to enable
Maraquita to do her justice. Perhaps she was even ignorant of the blame
cast upon her; and with this last charitable thought of her adopted
sister, and a resolution to see her on the first opportunity, Lizzie
sought her bed, and tried to compose herself to sleep.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER III.


Maraquita was lying in her silken hammock, swinging under the orange
trees, and thinking over the events of the last few days. They had
been important ones for her. The unexpected death of the Doctor had
frightened her beyond measure, and more than ever did she feel that
Henri de Courcelles owed it to her to make every exertion in his power
to remove the proof of her shame from San Diego. Until that was done,
she should have no rest. But she was very undecided about Sir Russell
Johnstone. She didn’t wish to marry him--all her heart (such as it
was) was set on Henri de Courcelles--but yet she wanted to be the wife
of the Governor of San Diego, and certain hints from her mother had
shown her it would be the best, and perhaps the only way, to get out
of the scrape she was in. And if she refused Sir Russell Johnstone, it
would be all the same; her parents would never consent to her marrying
Monsieur de Courcelles.

Maraquita tossed to and fro as she thought over these things, and
made the hammock swing as far as its cords would admit, till the
orange blossoms and their glossy leaves swept across her face, and old
Jessica, who was watching from below as usual, called out to her young
mistress to take care. Quita was trying to argue the matter out with
herself (as silly people will) so as to make the pieces of the puzzle
fit each other and please everybody all round, being too blind or too
selfish, meanwhile, to see that the only person she was really bent on
pleasing was herself. She believed that in a very few days she would be
called upon to decide the matter, for her mother had received a letter
from the Governor to ask if her daughter had returned to the White
House, but she was hardly prepared, as she lay there that morning, to
see Sir Russell’s barouche, with its pair of English horses, and its
outriders, dash up the drive, and stop before the portals of her home.
She flushed so rosy at the sight, that Jessica observed her emotion.

‘Dat only de Governor, missy, come to see Massa Courtney. De
Governor’s a fine gennelman, isn’t he, missy? Got beautiful coat and
trousers and waistcoat on, and fine whiskers, and nice red face. Dat
Government House a beautiful place, too, and dat carriage lovely. I’d
like to see my missy in a carriage like dat, wid fine English horses,
and coachman, and all.’

‘What nonsense you are talking, Jessica,’ said Quita querulously, as
she turned her head away. ‘Papa’s carriage is quite good enough for me,
and I don’t want any other.’

‘Ah, but some day my missy marry fine gennelman, and have everyting
dat’s nice and beautiful. Not one of dese island fellers--overseers and
such like,’ continued the negress contemptuously, ‘with half de blood
black in their veins, but a real English gennelman, with plenty money,
and all white blood.’

Maraquita reddened, and yawned, and turned pettishly away. She knew
well enough to whom old Jessica was alluding, and she resented the hint
as an impertinence.

Meanwhile Sir Russell Johnstone had rushed into the presence of Mr and
Mrs Courtney.

‘Fancy, my dear sir,’ he was exclaiming, ‘that yesterday the
police actually discovered a train of gunpowder laid right under
the banqueting-room of Government House! Had it not been for their
vigilance, at the next dinner-party I gave, we might all have been
blown up--I, you, your wife, even your lovely daughter. It is too
horrible a catastrophe to contemplate!’

‘Horrible indeed!’ echoed his host. ‘But are you sure that all is now
safe? Has a thorough search been made?’

‘They tell me so, and that I need have no further alarm. But it has
shaken my nerves, I can tell you that. And the delinquents are not
caught either, though the native police are on the alert.’

‘How is that?’

‘They have escaped to the Alligator Swamp; though why they can’t pursue
them there, beats me altogether.’

‘Ah, my dear Sir Russell,’ cried Mr Courtney, ‘you don’t know what the
Alligator Swamp is like, or you would not be surprised. Even a negro
will not venture to enter it, unless he is in fear of his life. It is
a regular morass of green slime. It is impossible to tell at each step
you take whether you will sink to the bottom of it or not; and it is
infested with alligators or caymen of the largest and most ferocious
breed. No living creatures but the caymen could breathe such an
atmosphere; for the green swamp raises poisonous fungi, the vapours
alone of which are almost certain death. These wretches who have
plotted against your life cannot possibly escape punishment. If they
do not fall into the hands of the police, they will certainly die, the
victims of the pestilential atmosphere of the Alligator Swamp.’

‘I am glad to hear it,’ replied the Governor, who was a short, stout
man of ordinary appearance, and with rather a round and rosy face, ‘for
I don’t consider my appointment worth the risk of being blown up. The
island seems to me to be in a regular state of rebellion, and I don’t
like it. If any more plots against my safety are discovered, I shall
resign, and return to England. Her Majesty would be the last person to
wish me to remain if there is the slightest fear of danger.’

‘Oh, there must not be--there _shall_ not be!’ exclaimed Mrs Courtney
pathetically, as the pictures of a retreating Governor and a lost
son-in-law floated before her mental vision. ‘These wretches must be
brought to judgment, and executed. I would have them all hanged, if I
were you, Sir Russell. The idea of their attempting such an outrage!
Hanging would be too good for them.’

‘I am not sure if I _can_ hang them; but, if so, you may be sure I
will,’ rejoined the Governor. ‘Why, it makes a man quite nervous of
going to his bed. It’s absurd--ridiculous--an insult to the British
Government!’

‘It must be stamped out at any cost,’ said Mr Courtney; ‘and until
it is--until things are more settled--if you would like to vacate
Government House for a little while, and would accept the hospitality
of Beauregard, Sir Russell, why, all I can say is, that everything I
possess (humble as it may be) is at your service.’

‘But wouldn’t they say I had run away?’ replied the Governor. ‘I should
like it above all things, but the papers have been rather spiteful
about me of late, and I am afraid they would declare I had shown the
white feather.’

‘But you must think of your own safety--_that_ is the first
consideration, surely!’ exclaimed Mrs Courtney. ‘And you must think of
others too, Sir Russell,--of those who care for you. My poor Maraquita
will be in a fever of anxiety as soon as she hears this news.’

She had begun to be afraid that his own peril had somewhat displaced
Maraquita from the Governor’s thoughts, and the idea that he might
even be frightened out of San Diego without fulfilling his promise,
filled her with alarm. She determined that if possible the engagement
should be ratified at once, and then, if anything further happened to
frighten Sir Russell back to England, he would be compelled to take his
wife with him. Her _ruse_ had the desired effect, and the mention of
her daughter turned the Governor’s thoughts in another direction.

‘Ah, the beautiful Miss Courtney. Pray don’t think that I have
forgotten her, in the exercise of my functions. To quell this native
rebellion is the first duty I owe to my Queen and country, but my heart
has been at the White House, my dear madam, all the time. How is your
sweet daughter? Have you told her of my proposal? Is it possible I may
have the great pleasure of seeing her?’

Mrs Courtney was not quite sure what to answer. She glanced at her
husband, but he was standing with his back to her, and would make no
sign, so she was thrown upon her own resources. Yet she was a woman,
and when it is a matter of _finesse_, when do a woman’s resources fail?

‘She is better, dear Sir Russell--much better, almost well, in fact,
but still weak, and unequal to any exertion. I _did_ try to approach
the subject of your most flattering proposal to her on her return home,
but her agitation became so great, I was forced to relinquish it. You
must not condemn her weakness. The prospect is a very dazzling one to a
simple and innocent girl like our Maraquita.’

‘Do you mean to tell me, then, that she is favourably disposed towards
me?’ inquired the Governor excitedly.

It is true that he was a Governor, and would perhaps have been somewhat
surprised at any woman in San Diego refusing his suit. But at the
same time he was fifty years of age, stout, bald, and past the age of
romance, and it was enough to make any such man excited, to hear that
a pure and lovely girl of eighteen was ready and eager to fly into his
arms. He was quite aware of the value of the position he had to offer
to the planter’s daughter, but he was conceited enough to be gulled
into the belief that she could actually fall in love with him, more
than with the advantages which a marriage with him would entail. His
rosy face became rubicund with expectant pleasure, and he already
saw himself with the most beautiful woman in San Diego folded in his
embrace.

‘_Favourably disposed!_’ echoed Mrs Courtney. ‘My dear Sir Russell,
that is not the word! Maraquita is overpowered by the preference you
have shown towards her, only too shy to offer you her timid girlish
love in return. She is so afraid she can give you nothing worth the
having in exchange for your noble proposal to make her your wife.’

‘If she will give me _herself_, it is all I ask,’ returned the
Governor. ‘And now, tell me, may I see her, and plead my cause in
person?’

‘Oh, Sir Russell, one moment!’ cried Mrs Courtney, hurriedly. ‘Let Mr
Courtney offer you some refreshment, whilst I prepare our sweet girl
for your visit. You do not know how shy and sensitive she is. The very
mention of marriage makes her blush. Let me go to my child, and when
she is calm enough to receive you, I will return and tell you so.’

‘As you please, my dear madam, but don’t try my patience too far. Mr
Courtney and I will have a cigar together, and talk over our plans
for the future, whilst you are gone.’ And with a courtly bow to his
hostess, Sir Russell let her leave the room.

Mrs Courtney hastened at once to Maraquita’s side. _Hastened_ is
not exactly the word for the ungraceful waddle which she used when
she wished to expedite her footsteps, but she walked as fast as her
unwieldy form would permit her, to the shady spot where Quita’s hammock
swung under the orange trees, and having dismissed Jessica to the
house, she entered at once upon her subject.

‘Quita, my darling, Sir Russell Johnstone has come for your answer to
his proposal.’

She was clever in her own way, this half-educated, half-bred Spanish
woman. She knew that if she gave Quita time to reflect, she would
probably think of a way out of the dilemma in which she found herself,
or consult her lover, and be persuaded perhaps to elope with him, and
ruin her prospects for ever. She had read enough of her daughter’s mind
on the first day she returned home, to see that all her inclinations
were opposed to marrying Sir Russell Johnstone, and if she were
persuaded to consent to it, it must be through _finesse_, or an appeal
to her ambition. What Mrs Courtney wanted now, was to hurry Maraquita
into accepting the Governor’s proposal, and make her so far commit
herself that she could not back out of it afterwards. And she had
good materials to work upon, for Maraquita was a youthful copy of her
mother, as vain, and selfish, and indolent, and heartless, and as fond
of luxuries and the good things of this life. But she was considerably
startled at hearing she had to make up her mind so soon, and her large
dark eyes--so like those of a deer--opened wide with consternation and
alarm.

‘Oh, mother! Surely I need not give him an answer to-day. It is so very
soon. I have had no time to think about it.’

‘_No time to think about it!_’ echoed Mrs Courtney; ‘why, the case
is plain enough. What thinking does it require? Sir Russell offers
to make you Lady Johnstone, and the mistress of Government House. He
has an income of many thousands a year, and your father will settle a
handsome dowry on you if you marry him. You will be the richest woman,
and the woman of highest rank, in San Diego, and every soul in the
island will exclaim at your good fortune. What more, in the name of
Heaven, do you want, Maraquita?’

‘I am so afraid I sha’n’t love him,’ sighed the girl, with a last
remnant of womanly feeling.

‘Very well,’ exclaimed Mrs Courtney, turning her back upon her
daughter, and professing to be about to leave her, ‘I will go and tell
Sir Russell, and at once! He is waiting your answer, and I can’t keep
a Governor on tenterhooks for hours. If you refuse him, he says he is
going back to England by the next steamer, and shall never return
here, as he is sick of San Diego, and will only stay on condition you
become his wife. But as you won’t try to love him, it is of no use.’

‘Stay, mother, stay!’ cried Quita hurriedly; ‘don’t go just yet. Wait
one moment, and speak to me. Is it _really_ true that Sir Russell will
leave San Diego if I don’t marry him?’

‘Didn’t I say so, Maraquita. He declares that nothing shall make him
stay; and if he returns, it will be with a Lady Johnstone to preside
over Government House for him. He will marry an English girl, and
you will have the mortification of seeing some woman, with half your
beauty, enjoying all the advantages you have been fool enough to
refuse. Quita, I have no patience with you.’

‘But, mamma--mamma, I haven’t refused him. I don’t _mean_ to refuse
him! If (as you say) I must make up my mind at once, I _have_ made it
up! I accept Sir Russell’s proposal, and you can go and tell him so.’

‘Oh, my darling girl!’ exclaimed Mrs Courtney effusively, ‘I was sure
you would see this grand prospect in its proper light at last. How
proud and delighted your father will be to hear your decision. But you
must give Sir Russell his answer in person, my love. You must let me
bring him here, and tell him yourself that you will be his wife.’

‘But I am not fit to see any one. I am so untidy!’ cried Quita, jumping
out of her hammock, and standing before her mother.

She was clothed in a long loose robe, of saffron colour, with hanging
sleeves, that showed her white arms, and a belt that spanned her
slender waist. Her dusky hair lay in a rippling mass upon her
shoulders, and her fair face was flushed with excitement, and perhaps
regret. She had never looked more lovely in her life, and Mrs Courtney
regarded her with pardonable pride and admiration.

‘You are charming, my dear! I will not have you wait to make a single
alteration in your dress; and Sir Russell is so impatient, that he
will readily pardon the negligence of your morning attire. He knows
you have been ill, and are disinclined for much exertion. Sit down in
this chair, Quita, and I will bring him to you in another minute. Oh,
my dear child,’ concluded Mrs Courtney, with a close embrace, ‘how
thankful I am that all is about to end so happily for you! You have
half killed me by your thoughtlessness and imprudence.’

There were genuine tears in her mother’s eyes as she pronounced the
words, and Quita felt for the first time, perhaps, what a terrible risk
she had run.

‘Never mind, mamma!’ she whispered, ‘it is over now, and _he_--he has
promised me that I shall never hear anything more about it. Let us try
and forget it ever occurred.’

‘Yes, my dearest girl, that is just what you must do. Blot out the
past, like a hideous dream. It has been a terrible experience for you,
and so long as you remained unmarried, I should always have trembled
for your safety. But now--as the wife of the Governor, my dear child’s
future is assured, and we will never mention the hateful subject
again--not even to each other.’

‘No! and, mamma, you told me the other day that (excepting for certain
reasons) you would have had some changes made on the plantation.
Couldn’t you manage to have those changes made now. Not too suddenly,
you know, so as to excite suspicion, but as if they were brought
about in the natural course of events. Can’t you persuade papa,’ said
Maraquita, hiding her face in her mother’s bosom, ‘to engage a--a--new
overseer? It would be better for all of us.’

‘You are quite right, my darling,’ whispered Mrs Courtney back again,
‘and I am glad you have so much sense. Trust me, dear, that you shall
not be annoyed in this matter. As soon as your marriage is settled, I
will take you up on the hill range for change of air, and before you
return we will have done what you suggest. I have a dozen good reasons
to give your father for engaging some one else in that person’s place.’

‘Don’t be harsh with him,’ faltered Maraquita; ‘remember that--that--’

But this was a dangerous topic, on which Mrs Courtney did not choose to
dilate.

‘I can remember nothing now, my dear, except that Sir Russell is
waiting for your answer, and that I must go and fetch him to you.
Now, be a woman, Maraquita! Think of all you owe to yourself, and the
brilliant future that lies before you! I really believe I should go out
of my mind with grief if anything happened to prevent it.’

Mrs Courtney walked back to the house as quickly as she was able, and
Maraquita lay in the bamboo chair, with her eyes closed, and the unshed
tears trembling like dewdrops on her long dark lashes. She had not to
wait long! In another minute her mother had returned, in company with
the Governor, and Quita had to disperse the vision of her handsome
Spanish lover, with his graceful form and romantic bearing, and open
her eyes upon a stout and pursy little Englishman, with a bald head and
uninteresting features, and legs too short for his body.

But there was no mistaking the expression of his beaming face, and the
girl saw at a glance that the matter had been concluded for her, and
she was already in his eyes the future Lady Johnstone.

‘My dear Miss Courtney--may I not say my dear Maraquita?’ he commenced,
‘I cannot tell you how flattered I feel by your kind acceptance of my
offer, nor how much I hope it will be the forerunner of our life-long
happiness.’

He raised the hand she extended, to his lips as he spoke, and she felt
compelled to reply, in a faltering voice,--

‘I hope it will--’

‘I won’t hear of any doubts about it,’ exclaimed Mrs Courtney
triumphantly. ‘I feel _sure_, Sir Russell, that my sweet child’s
happiness is safe in your hands; and as for yours--why, if the
affection and duty of a simple and innocent girl can secure it, it
will be as safe as her own. You must not forget, my dear sir, that you
have chosen to honour a very young girl--almost a child--with your
preference, and will, I know, make allowance for any faults that may
arise from ignorance of the world and of society.’

‘I know that I have chosen the loveliest and sweetest girl in San
Diego!’ cried the Governor enthusiastically, ‘and that it will be the
aim of my life to surround her with every luxury and pleasure that
I can afford; and as for her faults, I shall never see any to make
allowance for.’

‘Oh, Sir Russell,’ replied Mrs Courtney, in the same strain, ‘you must
not spoil my child! I know myself that her chief fault is that which
will mend every day; still she is _very_ young--there is no denying
that--and will often need a little kindly counsel as to how she should
act in her high position.’

‘She will only need to be herself, and to act on her own impulses, to
make the most charming hostess that ever presided at the Government
House. But we have not yet spoken of when the marriage is to take
place, Mrs Courtney,--and I hope you will persuade Maraquita not to
keep me waiting too long.’

‘You are very impatient,’ she replied, smiling, ‘but you must not
forget that my dear child has been ill, and is still very weak and
fragile. Still, if you make a point of it, I am sure neither Mr
Courtney nor myself will stand in the way of a speedy wedding.’

‘But what will Miss Maraquita say?’ demanded the Governor, bending over
her.

‘My mother can decide for me,’ she murmured faintly. ‘I have never
disobeyed you yet, mamma, have I?’

‘Never! my dear, never! You have been the best and most dutiful of
daughters, and deferred to your parents’ wishes in all things--’

But here the remembrance of certain late events put a sudden stop to
Mrs Courtney’s eloquence, and she watched the crimson blood that rose
to Quita’s cheek, in alarm. The girl was still weak: it was dangerous
to provoke an emotion which she might find it impossible to quell.

‘But I think we have discussed this exciting topic sufficiently for
to-day,’ she continued. ‘Maraquita is easily upset, and I should
be sorry to see her thrown back again. Will you settle the knotty
question of the wedding-day with me, Sir Russell, after you have
finished talking to my daughter? I don’t fancy you will find there are
many difficulties in the way--but we must think first of Maraquita’s
strength, and how we can restore it for the important occasion.’

‘Certainly! that is the chief consideration,’ replied Sir Russell;
‘what do you propose to do about it?’

‘I was thinking of taking her up to the hill range for a week, to
escape these enervating land breezes. I think a little change would do
her more good than anything else.’

‘The very thing!’ exclaimed Sir Russell, ‘and you can have the use of
the Government Bungalow, and all that is in it. When will you start?
To-morrow? If so, I will send word at once to have everything in
readiness for your reception. Don’t trouble yourself about taking your
carriage and horses, mine will be there, and at your entire disposal.
And I trust that after the rest of a day or two, Maraquita will permit
me to join your party, and accompany her on her excursions in search
of health. I have an Arab pony that carries a lady to perfection, and,
with your leave, I will send it up for her use. What does my _fiancée_
say? Does my proposal meet with her approval?’

‘She would be a very ungrateful girl, and very hard to please, if it
did not,’ said her mother, answering for her; and then perceiving that
Quita’s self-command was almost at an end, and that she was on the
point of breaking down, she added playfully,--

‘And now I am going to be hard-hearted and carry you off, Sir Russell,
for my poor child is overcome with all this excitement, and unable to
bear any more at present. Please be good, and return with me to the
White House; and if you will call upon us again this evening, I have
no doubt she will be calmer, and better able to thank you for all your
kind offers on her behalf.’

The Governor rose at once (for he was a gentleman, although he was ugly
and ill-formed), and took his leave. As he did so, he stooped down and
kissed Maraquita on the cheek. It was not an out-of-the-way thing for
a newly-accepted lover to do, but the salute, quietly as it was given,
seemed to sting her. She did not resent it whilst her mother and Sir
Russell Johnstone were in sight, but as soon as the doors of the White
House had closed upon them, she hid her face in her hands, and burst
into a flood of tears.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER IV.


She was still weeping quietly, when the branches of the orange tree
which formed a leafy bower around her, were parted, and a voice
exclaimed, with passionate intensity,--

‘Maraquita!’

The girl sprang to her feet without any effort to conceal her tears.
Henri de Courcelles stood beside her.

‘Oh, go!’ she implored, ‘go at once. You don’t know the risk you are
running. My mother suspects us, and she may be back in another moment.
For _my_ sake, Henri, go.’

‘Not unless you will tell me the cause of your grief. Is it because
this burden is too heavy for you? If so, come with me, and let us share
it, and fight the world together.’

‘I cannot talk with you about it now, Henri,’ replied Maraquita, with
a look of alarm; ‘it is impossible. You _must_ leave me. I see Jessica
coming from the house.’

‘Then where will you meet me, for I shall not rest until you have
satisfied my curiosity; besides, I have important news for you
about--it.’

This intelligence made Quita change her mind. She was intensely anxious
to have the assurance of her own complete safety, and she could be
cunning enough where her inclinations were concerned.

‘Have you done--what I asked you?’ she gasped.

‘I have made everything right, but I cannot explain the matter to you
in a moment, nor where there is any fear of our being overheard.’

‘Wait for me in the oleander thicket, then,’ cried Maraquita. ‘I will
be there in five minutes.’

Henri de Courcelles nodded acquiescence, and disappeared as old Jessica
came up to her young mistress.

‘Missus Courtney send me to ask if my missy like to have someting to
eat and drink now; and will missy come back to de house, or will she
have it brought out here under de trees?’ asked the negress.

‘Neither, Jessica. Tell mamma I am not hungry or thirsty, only very
sleepy, and I want to be left alone for an hour or two. I can call you
when I wake.’

‘If missy sleepy, better come and sleep in house,’ urged Jessica. ‘So
many flies and ’skeeters about here.’

‘I wish you would let me do as I like, Jessica,’ said Quita, ‘and keep
your suggestions to yourself.’

‘I’se very sorry, missy. I won’t say any more, only stop here and keep
off de flies and tings from your face.’

‘You’re enough to drive a saint mad!’ cried Maraquita, stamping her
foot. ‘Didn’t I tell you I wanted to be left alone? What is it to you
if I like flies and mosquitoes buzzing about me? Go back to the house,
and don’t come near me again till I give you leave.’

The old nurse obeyed without a murmur; but she _did_ murmur, for all
that. The coloured people are very secretive, and can assume an
appearance of complete innocence, all the time they are cognisant of
their employer’s most important secrets.

‘Ah! my poor little missy,’ muttered Jessica to herself, as she
shambled on her bare flat feet towards the house, ‘you think ole black
nurse blind, but she see too well. She know all about de baby at
Doctor’s bungalow, and who’s de fader and moder of it, as well as you.
And she will see her little missy revenged, before many moons is ober
her head, into de bargain. Cuss dat oberseer!’

Meanwhile Maraquita, having watched Jessica into the house, through the
branches of the orange tree, stole out the opposite side, and, keeping
well out of view of the windows, took her way towards the oleander
thicket, which lay between her home and De Courcelles’ bungalow. It
was a wild patch of flowering shrubs, densely planted together, and
forming a sufficient ambush to conceal any number of persons from
the public gaze. There was a wooden bench in one part of it, where
Maraquita and De Courcelles had often held their moonlight trysts
together; and there she found him eager to tell his news, and claim his
reward.

Quita sunk down upon the bench, and trembled. She was not only weak
from her recent illness, but she dreaded the scene which might follow
the impending revelation.

‘You are far from well yet, my Quita,’ said Henri de Courcelles, as he
folded his arms about her trembling form; ‘but I have something to tell
you which will set your mind at rest.’

‘Tell it to me quickly, then,’ rejoined Maraquita. ‘Have you sent it
out of the island? Are you _sure_ I shall never hear of it again?’

‘No, I cannot quite promise you that,’ replied De Courcelles, with
an intuitive disgust (even in the midst of his passion) for her
undisguised selfishness. ‘It has never been in my hands, so it was
impossible I could form any plans for it. But circumstances have fallen
out so fortunately, that I don’t see any chance of suspicion falling
upon _you_.’

‘What do you mean? I don’t understand you,’ said Quita pettishly. ‘If
it is to remain in San Diego, the secret may come out any day, and my
only safety will be in leaving the island.’

‘Wait a moment, dearest, and listen to me. It seems that the day before
the Doctor’s death, he brought the child home to his bungalow, where it
now is--’

‘With Lizzie? In the bungalow?’ cried Quita, turning ashy pale. ‘Oh, my
God! then all is over, and I am lost!’

‘Hush! hush! Maraquita. Nothing of the sort. Liz refuses to say a word
upon the subject. _I_ have questioned her narrowly; so has your father;
and all she will answer is that before his death Dr Fellows extracted a
solemn oath from her never to disclose anything concerning the child,
and that her lips are sealed.’

‘Oh, but it will come out; it is sure to come out some day!’ exclaimed
Quita, weeping, as she wrung her hands in abject fear. ‘You have ruined
me, Henri! You have destroyed all my future prospects! I shall be
branded for ever as a dishonest woman!’

‘But it is impossible! All the plantation--I may say all San
Diego--already believes the child to be Lizzie’s own.’

Maraquita stared at him in astonishment.

‘They believe _that_! But what does Lizzie say?’

‘She can say nothing! Her lips are sealed by her oath!’

‘Some day the shame may prove too hard to bear, and they will be forced
open.’

‘It will be too late then to assert her innocence. The world of San
Diego is quite convinced by this time that she is the mother of the
infant, and her attempts to cast the blame on you will only appear
to be an impudent subterfuge. She has no proof--or witness--to bring
forward in confirmation of the truth.’

‘Poor Lizzie,’ said Quita, in a low voice, visions of past
kindnesses on the part of her adopted sister, and of a faithful
life-long affection, floated before her mind, and made her tremble.
Something--was it the last effort made by her Good Angel in her
behalf--seemed to rise within her heart, and prompt her to cry out
that _it must not be_, that she _could_ not be guilty of this dreadful
wrong, and let her just burthen lie on the shoulders of an innocent
woman. But then she remembered the shame and the disgrace that would
ensue to her, and how her parents would despise and reproach her, and
Sir Russell Johnstone would refuse to make her his wife, and moral
cowardice made her shiver and remain silent.

‘Ay! poor Lizzie,’ echoed De Courcelles. ‘I am really sorry for the
girl; but what can be done? It is a choice between two evils. Either
_she_ must be sacrificed, or my peerless Maraquita. Do you suppose I
could hesitate between them? There is one thing to be said, however.
Lizzie is not in your position. She will not feel the disgrace so
keenly as you would. And, before long, Maraquita, we may be able to
relieve her of her burthen.’

Maraquita did not like the last allusion.

‘I don’t see _how_,’ she answered lamely.

‘Have you forgotten, then, what you promised, when you asked me to
assist you to escape the inevitable blame of the consequences of our
mutual love,--that, if your parents refused to sanction our marriage,
you would elope with me to Santa Lucia, and not return until we were
man and wife in the eyes of the law, as we are now in the eyes of
Heaven?’

‘But you have _not_ done as I asked you,’ she replied evasively. ‘I
don’t see that you have done anything. _It_ is still here, closer at
hand even than I thought it was, and (whatever you may say) liable at
any moment to be brought home to my door. And there is another danger,
Henri. Mamma has discovered our secret--how, I am unable to say, but
she has told me so pretty plainly, and also that she will keep it only
on one condition--’

‘And that is--’

‘That I accept the proposals of Sir Russell Johnstone.’

‘_You shall not!_’ cried her lover indignantly. ‘I will not stand by
quietly and see the woman I consider _my wife_ handed over to that
bald-headed old Governor. I will go straight up to Mr Courtney sooner,
and confess the truth, and ask his pardon for what I have done. Surely
he would never wish you to marry another man, if he knew what has taken
place between us. And if he persists in dragging you to the altar, I
will tear you from your bridegroom’s arms, and stab you to the heart,
before he shall claim what is mine.’

Quita’s star-like eyes dilated with terror. She knew something of what
the Spanish and Creole blood is capable of doing when roused, and
foresaw bloodshed--perhaps murder--if Henri de Courcelles did not have
his own way. And yet, to give up the brilliant prospect before her, in
order to become an overseer’s wife, and one whose maiden reputation
would be lightly spoken of, seemed to be impossible. Why had she ever
entangled her feet in a net which threatened to drag her down to a
life of obloquy and shame? To what friend could she turn in her great
need? Suddenly the idea flashed across her mind that she would confess
everything to her mother. Mrs Courtney already knew (or had guessed)
the truth, and counselled her daughter on the best mode of escaping
its results. She was very anxious to see Maraquita Lady Johnstone.
If making a clean breast of her secret brought a certain amount of
recrimination on her head, it would at the same time secure her an
ally with whom to fight this terrible battle for a name and a position
in life. For the first time hope and comfort seemed to enter her
breast. If her mother were on her side, she felt she could defy Henri
de Courcelles, and Liz Fellows, and the world. All their assertions
would be taken as impudent lies, and only secure their own immediate
banishment from Beauregard. But, meanwhile, her lover must be quieted
and conciliated, and Maraquita knew how to do it full well. She had
scarcely conceived the notion how to act in the future, before her
white arms were wreathed about his neck.

‘Henri,’ she cried, with her lips to his, ‘don’t speak to me like that!
Don’t think of such a thing, for Heaven’s sake! Do you imagine that _I_
would ever consent to be placed in such a position, or that any amount
of tyranny would make me marry a man against my will? Let the worst
come to the worst, dear; let mamma tell my father of our intrigue; it
will only result in your having to leave San Diego. Whether _I_ shall
be able to go too, remains to be proved. I am under age, you know, and
if papa chooses to lock me up, or send me to England, I suppose he can.
But even _that_ will be better than being forced to marry a man I don’t
love; and you know that I shall always remember you, dearest, and
think of the time that is past, as the happiest portion of my life.’

Henri de Courcelles looked sullen and suspicious. The clasping arms
were very sweet, and the ripe lips very tempting, but there was a false
ring in Quita’s speech, which made itself apparent to his senses,
although his judgment could not detect it. There was no fault to be
found with her words, yet they inspired him with distrust, and he felt
certain that she was betraying whilst she kissed him.

‘I don’t know what to think of you, Maraquita,’ he said presently. ‘I
suppose you love me, in your way, but you seem very ready to fall in
with your parents’ plans to get rid of me.’

‘But what _could_ I do, Henri, if my father was determined to separate
us? Am I not completely in his power? Our only chance appears to me to
lie in secrecy, and yet you speak as if you would disclose the affair
to all San Diego.’

‘And if I hold my tongue and remain quiet, what then? You will marry
Sir Russell Johnstone before my very eyes, and I shall have to grin and
bear it.’

‘We are the most unfortunate people in the world’, sighed Maraquita,
with mock sentimentality.

‘You mean that _I_ am the most unfortunate man in the world, ever to
have set my heart on a girl who doesn’t care two straws for me. I can
see through you now, Maraquita. You were willing enough to commit the
sin, but you are too great a coward to face the consequences of it.
You have deceived and disobeyed your parents over and over again,
when it suited your pleasure to do so, but when it comes to a question
of marrying the man you profess to love, you take refuge behind the
transparent screen of filial duty and affection. I was good enough
for your lover, it appears, but I am _not_ good enough to be your
husband. You have higher views in prospect for yourself, and I may
go anywhere,--be kicked out of my appointment, and cast homeless on
San Diego--what does it signify to you, so long as you become Lady
Johnstone, and have plenty to eat and drink, and a spotless reputation.
But it shall not be! You have made yourself _mine_, and I refuse to
give you up. If you attempt to become the wife of any other man,
whether in deference to your parents’ wishes, or your own, I will blast
your name from north to south, till the commonest fellow on the island
would refuse to give you his. Every black in San Diego shall know
_what_ you are, a light love, a false woman, and a heartless mother.’

‘You shall not--_you dare not_!’ gasped Maraquita, now thoroughly
frightened.

‘You shall see what I can _dare_!’ he exclaimed wildly. ‘For I will
take your life and my own, sooner than give you up to another.’

And with that Henri de Courcelles walked away, and left her sitting
there by herself. As soon as she was convinced he was not coming back
again, Quita rose, and with trembling steps walked slowly back to the
White House. He had succeeded in completely alarming her. She had
never seen him like this before, and he was terrible in his anger. His
black eyes had gleamed on her like polished steel, and his hand had
involuntarily sought his side, as though ready to grasp an invisible
stiletto. Quita felt certain he would be capable of any violence,
if not restrained, and fear lent her boldness. She would secure one
friend at least in her extremity, and whatever it cost her she would
confide her trouble to her mother. She found Mrs Courtney alone in her
own room, lying on a sofa, with bare feet, and the last novel that
had reached San Diego in her hand. But as she saw Maraquita enter the
chamber, she raised herself to a sitting position.

‘My dearest child! what is the matter? You are looking quite ill again.’

‘Oh, mamma, mamma,’ cried Quita, sinking at her mother’s feet, ‘I am so
unhappy!’

And then, in a broken voice, and with her face still hidden, she told
the story of her disgrace, and the danger which appeared to threaten
her.

Mrs Courtney listened in silence. She had suspected the cause of her
daughter’s illness, and the author of her ruin, but she was hardly
prepared to hear there was a living witness to her shame domiciled so
close to Beauregard. Her naturally sallow complexion turned almost
livid with horror, and her unwieldy frame shook with agitation. And
when the girl had finished her miserable recital, all her mother could
utter was,--

‘Oh, Maraquita, Maraquita, I couldn’t have believed it of you!’

‘Mother, don’t speak to me like that! I know I have been very wicked,
but I have no friend but you, and if _you_ desert me, I shall be lost.
Oh, mother, save me this once, and I will do everything you ask me in
the future. You want me to became Lady Johnstone, don’t you? But you
must think of some means of stopping Henri’s tongue, or I never shall
be. I did not think he would be so spiteful and revengeful! He says he
will stab me at the very altar.’

‘That is all talk, my dear! he will do no such thing! He shall be sent
out of Beauregard before a week is over his head; and if he dares to
assail your character, your father shall have him punished for it. But
listen to me, Quita. There is only one way to fight this scandal, and
that is to deny everything. Now, let me understand you plainly. Are you
_sure_ that no one but Dr Fellows and his daughter knew the secret of
this birth?’

‘_Quite_ sure, mamma! The Doctor told me so over and over again; and I
don’t think Lizzie knows _whose_ baby it is--and if she does, she has
taken an oath never to reveal it--and Lizzie will keep her oath!’ said
Maraquita, with complete faith in the fidelity of her friend.

‘There was no other person in the house at the time?’

‘No one, mamma.’

‘Then your course is plain. Whoever dares to mention this story to you,
or at whatever time it may crop up against you, _deny it entirely_.
Say you have never heard of such a thing before, and you are entirely
ignorant how it could have originated. _I_--as your mother--will
corroborate your statement, and we will uphold our assertion before the
world. Lizzie Fellows is really the only witness that can come against
you, and she will not break her promise, I am sure of that.

‘As for that villain De Courcelles, your father shall give him a
summary dismissal, and anything he may say in his rage will be taken
for revenge. He can _prove_ nothing. He has only his bare word to give
for it, and who would believe him against your own parents? Meanwhile,
dearest, the sooner your marriage takes place the better, and then you
will feel safe. But whatever you do, Maraquita, never acknowledge your
shame again, even to De Courcelles. You never know who may overhear it.
Try to believe it has never been, and then you will act as though it
had never been. As for marrying your father’s overseer, it is out of
the question, and like his presumption to dream of it. As if he hadn’t
done you harm enough already, without wishing to hamper you for life!
It’s like the unreasonable selfishness of men. But you may make your
mind easy, my dear, your mother will save you.’

‘Oh, mamma, how I wish I could go away somewhere, and never see nor
hear anything of him again!’ sobbed Maraquita.

‘So you shall, Quita, if you will only have a little patience. But
cease crying now, my child, or you will make yourself ill. Lie down on
my couch, and try to go to sleep. I won’t let you leave the house again
until Monsieur de Courcelles has quitted the plantation.’

And with a kiss of forgiveness, Mrs Courtney left her frail daughter to
repose.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER V.


The next morning Liz was walking up the avenue of orange trees that led
to the White House, with her eyes fixed upon the ground, and her brow
wrinkled with perplexity. After many hours of painful deliberation,
she had come to the conclusion to take the advice of Captain Norris,
and beg Maraquita to relieve her of the intolerable burden of shame
she bore for her sake; but _how_ to accuse her adopted sister of her
sin, troubled her beyond measure. She felt so deeply for her youth
and betrayed innocence. Such a well of divine compassion for the
injured girl was mingled with her own horror of the deed, that she
scarcely knew whether she should feel most inclined to commiserate
with, or to blame her. Liz pictured Quita to herself writhing on the
ground for very shame at the discovery of her weakness, bright-eyed,
dusky-haired Maraquita, who had always seemed so much to be envied and
admired, prostrate in her humiliation, and her generous heart bled
in anticipation of her sister’s pain. She conned over and over again
the words in which she would break the truth to her, trying to make
them as tender and little accusing as she could. She would endeavour
(she thought) to first gain Quita’s confidence, and then to make her
understand that, if she would only do what was just, in confessing the
truth to her parents, Liz would be her friend, and the friend of her
little daughter, to their lives’ end. But what she was about to ask of
Quita was a very serious thing, and she doubted if the girl’s strength
of mind would carry her through it.

She did not ring for admittance when she reached the White House. She
had been accustomed to enter and leave it as she chose, and experienced
no difficulty in finding her way at once to the chamber where Maraquita
spent most of her morning hours.

This was an apartment adjoining her bedroom, and furnished more with
a view to the repose which is so essential in the torrid climate of
the West Indies, than to the pursuit of any active work. Its French
windows, opening on the garden, were shaded by green jalousies,
through which the luxuriant creepers thrust their tendrils and their
leaves; the marble floor was strewn with plaited mats of various
coloured straws; the furniture consisted of a couple of bamboo lounges
and a marble table, on which stood a silver tray bearing fruit and
cooling drinks. The only ornaments it contained were a large mirror and
a couple of handsome vases filled with roses. Everything about the room
was conducive to coolness and repose; and Maraquita, attired in white
muslin, with a palm leaf in her hand, and stretched full length on one
of the couches, with her eyes half closed, was a personification of the
goddess of Sleep or Indolence, or perhaps both.

She started, and coloured slightly as Liz slipped into the room through
the verandah. Her last conversation with Henri de Courcelles was in
her mind. She had been thinking of it as Liz entered, and a secret
intuition made her feel that her adopted sister would allude to the
subject. A craven fear took possession of her, and made her heart beat
to suffocation; but only for a moment. The next she had remembered her
mother’s caution and promised championship, and had resolved to carry
out her advice (if necessary) to the very letter. As she sank back upon
her couch, Lizzie advanced towards her with affectionate solicitude.

‘Have I startled you, Quita? I hope not. It seems so long since we met;
and so much has happened since then, that I felt I must come up and see
you to-day. How are you, dear? Quite strong again?’

As she sat down by the girl’s side, and laid her hand tenderly upon
her arm, Quita turned pettishly away.

‘That is rather a silly question for a lady doctor to ask me, Lizzie.
How can I be quite strong again after such a nasty attack of fever? I
am as weak as I can well be, and mamma is going to take me up to the
hill range to-morrow or next day for change of air.’

‘I am glad of that, dear. It will be the best thing for you, for you
must have suffered much, my poor Quita, I am sure, both in mind and
body.’

Quita did not like this thrust, but she parried it bravely.

‘Well, I _did_ suffer with the fever, as you know, and the only wonder
is that it didn’t kill me, as it has done so many of the coolies. It
was your poor father who saved my life. And then that _he_ should go
himself! I have felt that terribly, Liz. I was very fond of him. He was
like a second father to me, and his sudden death has cut us all up, as
well as you.’

There were tears in Maraquita’s voice as she spoke, which brought the
kindred drops welling up to Lizzie’s eyes, and for a few moments the
girls wept together as for a common loss.

‘Oh, Quita,’ said Liz, as soon as she could speak calmly again, ‘I know
that you and your father and mother have felt for me in my trouble,
for, kind as you have been to us, you can never realise the depth of
it. My father was my world. He stood between me and every anxiety, and
now that he is gone, I feel as if I stood alone, the centre of a storm
of suspicion, and accusation, and reproach.’

Maraquita paled under this allusion, but she felt obliged to say,--

‘What do you mean?’

‘Can you ask me, Quita?’ exclaimed Liz suddenly. ‘Is it possible that
the rumours that are afloat concerning me have failed to reach your
ears? Mr Courtney told me that he had heard them. Surely he repeated
them to you.’

‘No, papa has told me nothing, and I don’t know what rumours you allude
to,’ replied Quita; but had the room not been darkened to shut out the
morning heat, Lizzie must have seen the crimson blood that rushed to
her face with fear of what was coming.

‘Then I must tell you,’ said Lizzie, drawing nearer to the couch, while
she looked cautiously about the room to be sure that no one was within
hearing. ‘Indeed I came up here this morning expressly to tell you,
for the burden of secrecy and shame is more than I can bear.’

Whilst Lizzie beat about the bush, as though afraid to mention the
forbidden topic, Quita had felt timid and constrained, but now that she
seemed prepared to speak out, the defiance that is born of fear entered
the younger girl’s breast, and emboldened her to say or do anything in
the defence of her honour.

‘What secrecy? What shame? What have you been doing, Lizzie?’ she
exclaimed, with well-feigned surprise. ‘You talk in riddles to me
to-day.’

‘Ah, you have heard nothing, Quita. I can see that. You do not know
the terrible duty that has been laid upon me. But turn your face this
way, dear, and let me whisper to you. Don’t mind what I may say, Quita.
Remember that I am your sister, who has known you from a baby, and
that I sympathise with and feel for you in any trouble or sorrow you
may have to endure. You remember the night you came to our bungalow?’

‘I remember the night I was _told_ I went there, Liz; but I was half
delirious with the fever, and can vouch for nothing myself.’

‘I can well understand that you were half crazy with fear and pain,
dearest, but it was not the fever that made you so.’

‘The Doctor said it was the fever,’ argued Maraquita, with wide-open,
innocent eyes. ‘He told papa and mamma so.’

‘I know he did, for _your_ sake, and that they believed it. He
extracted a solemn oath from me at the same time, never to reveal what
I might see or hear that night. And I never _have_ revealed it, Quita,
and I never _will_. It shall lie hidden in my heart until my death.
Only _you_ must help me to bear it, or I shall die.’

Lizzie was sobbing now, though very quietly, behind the shelter of her
hands, whilst Maraquita lay on the couch silent but pondering what she
would say.

‘Speak to me,’ cried Lizzie presently. ‘Say something, for God’s sake,
and put me out of my pain.’

‘What am I to say?’ replied Maraquita. ‘You frighten me when you talk
like that. Has anything terrible happened since your poor father’s
death, and how can _I_ help you out of it?’

‘I will tell you what has happened,’ said Lizzie presently. ‘Mammy Lila
is dead, and the child is with me, and every one is talking about it,
and saying it is mine. What am I to do, Quita--what _am_ I to do? I
cannot speak, because my lips are closed by the oath my father made me
take; and if I _could_ speak, do you think I would betray my dearest
friend? And can I send it from me--the poor, helpless, tender little
creature who has no one to look after it and love it but myself?’

‘But whose child is it?’ inquired Maraquita, with her dark eyes fixed
full on those of her adopted sister.

Lizzie regarded her for a moment in silent consternation. Was it
possible that Quita was in ignorance of her child’s birth, and had her
late father managed so skilfully as to keep her unaware of what had
happened? Such things _had_ been. But the next minute Liz had rejected
the idea with scorn. At any rate Maraquita must have known what lay
before her when she found her way to the Doctor’s bungalow, and if she
affected ignorance now, it was only because she was unaware that Lizzie
knew the whole truth.

‘Oh, Maraquita,’ she exclaimed, ‘don’t be afraid of confessing it to
me, for I know everything! My father was obliged to confide in me. He
could not have managed without my assistance. But my oath seals my lips
to all the world but you. But is it right to keep such a secret from
your father and mother, especially when doing so involves the ruin of
any other woman? You don’t know what the charge of that little infant
has brought upon me? Even Mr Courtney suspects my honesty. And as for
Monsieur de Courcelles--’

‘What has Monsieur de Courcelles to do with it?’ cried Quita hastily.

Lizzie coloured. She had never spoken of her relations with Henri de
Courcelles to Quita before, but this was no time to let feeling get the
better of justice.

‘He has everything to do with _me_,’ she answered, in a low tone.
‘Quita, I have never told you before, that I am engaged to be married
to Monsieur de Courcelles.’

‘_You_--engaged to be married--to _Henri_? Oh, it is not true! You are
deceiving me!’ exclaimed Quita, as she sprang to a sitting position,
and turned a face of ashy pallor to her companion.

But Lizzie suspected no more than she saw. She only thought that Quita
was astonished that she should have been kept in the dark with regard
to so important a subject, and hastened to defend her own conduct.

‘Indeed, it _is_ true! I daresay you are surprised that I should not
have told you, Quita (for I have told you almost everything), but
I have felt so deeply about it, that I _could_ not speak; and our
engagement has never been made public, though it has lasted over a
year.’

‘_You_--engaged to _Henri de Courcelles_!’ repeated Quita incredulously.

‘Yes! Although he has broken it off, of his own accord, and left me, I
cannot feel that I am free from him. For I love him, Quita. I love him
with my whole heart and soul. I did not think it was in me to love any
creature as I love him. And since we have parted, I have been unable
to sleep, or eat, or drink, for longing after him,--longing, above all
things, to clear my character in his eyes, even though I never saw him
afterwards. Oh, Quita, I must, I _must_ do this! To live on letting him
think me false and frail, will kill me! If you will not help me out of
this awful dilemma, my death will be on your head.’

But the news she had just heard had hardened Maraquita’s heart. All the
love she was capable of feeling had been given to De Courcelles, and if
he and Lizzie had combined to deceive her, why they might suffer for
it. That was all she thought of, as she clenched her teeth upon her
upper lip, to prevent her betraying her emotion.

‘Maraquita! won’t you save my love to me?’ wailed Lizzie. ‘All I ask is
to clear my name in the eyes of Henri de Courcelles, and then the rest
of the world may think and say what they choose.’

‘I don’t in the least understand what you are driving at,’ replied
Maraquita. ‘What can _I_ do to make up your quarrel? Monsieur de
Courcelles and you are both old enough to look after yourselves. If he
won’t believe you, he is not likely to believe _me_.’

‘But I cannot speak--my lips are sealed,’ cried Lizzie wildly; ‘and
he will not accept my word, instead of an explanation. Don’t you
understand me, Quita? Henri has heard this scandalous report about the
child, and believes it to be mine. He demands the name of the mother,
and no one but you can satisfy him. Oh, Quita, release me from this
awful vow, that threatens to ruin my character and blast my whole life!
Think, dear--is it fair that I should lose everything I love and value
most, because of your fault? Be brave and generous enough to share the
blame with me, and I promise you before God that it shall never go any
further.’

Maraquita sat straight up on her couch, and stared at her adopted
sister.

‘What do you want me to do? Speak plainly, for I do not comprehend
your meaning.’

‘I want you to tell your parents what you have done. They will pity,
and love, and forgive you, Quita, as I do. They will feel it was your
youth and ignorance that were at fault, and not your heart; and you
will feel happier, my poor sister, when your mother has shared your
secret, and forgiven it. I want you to tell Mr and Mrs Courtney that
the child in my bungalow is yours.’

‘_What!_’ cried Quita shrilly. ‘You want me to tell a lie in order to
screen yourself?’

‘_A lie!_’ repeated Lizzie. ‘You know it is not a lie; you know when
you came to us that night that you were delivered of a daughter, and
that my poor father took charge of it for you. Oh, Quita, if you could
see her,--her little waxen hands and feet, her wistful dark eyes, so
like your own, and her tiny mouth, which just begins to smile, your
mother’s heart would yearn to claim her for your own!’

For one moment Quita trembled at the picture Liz had conjured up, but
the next, fear of ruining her own prospects crushed the softer feeling
in her heart.

‘I deny it!’ she exclaimed loudly. ‘I deny every word you have uttered.
You are either mad, or you mistake me for some other woman. How _dare_
you insinuate that I have ever had a child?’

‘_You deny it!_’ echoed Lizzie, rising to her feet. ‘You can actually
look me in the face, and deny it, Quita?’

‘Most emphatically I do, and resent the insult you have laid upon me.
I know nothing about the child which is in your bungalow. It may be
yours, or any other woman’s, but it certainly is not _mine_; and if my
parents heard you had accused me of such a dishonour, they would turn
you from their doors!’

‘What is all this about?’ exclaimed Mrs Courtney, as she entered the
room. ‘Lizzie, you ought to know better than to let Maraquita excite
herself with talking, when she has scarcely recovered from her late
illness. She will have a relapse, if we do not take care.’

She had heard from Jessica that the Doctor’s daughter had entered the
house, and, fearful of what she might have come to say, had hastened
to the rescue of her daughter. Lizzie stood before her, silent and
confused, but Quita appealed to her mother’s protection at once.

‘Mamma, just hear what Lizzie has told me. She says there is a baby
at her bungalow which was left in the charge of her father, and she
accuses me of being the mother of it, and wants me to tell a lie to you
and papa, in order to screen herself from suspicion.’

‘_Lizzie_ accuses _you_ of being _a mother_!’ exclaimed Mrs Courtney,
with well-acted surprise. ‘Oh, it is _impossible_! Quita, you are
dreaming!’

‘Tell mamma if I am dreaming, Lizzie! Repeat to her what you said just
now.’

‘I shall do no such thing, Quita! I said what I did to you in
confidence, and I refuse to repeat it to any one.’

‘Because you know how mamma would resent such a foul calumny. Oh,
mamma,’ continued Quita to her mother, ‘what have I ever done to be
accused of such a dreadful thing? What would Sir Russell say if he
heard of it?’

‘I cannot believe my ears,’ said Mrs Courtney. ‘Do I hear aright,
Lizzie, that you have _dared_ to link my daughter’s name with such
a shameful story? What induced you to do it? Speak! I must have an
answer.’

‘I cannot speak, Mrs Courtney; I have nothing to say.’

‘Because you know yourself to be guilty. Don’t imagine that we have not
heard the scandal that is abroad concerning you. But I little thought
you would have the audacity to try and throw the blame upon my poor
Maraquita, she who has been like a sister to you.’

‘I have never denied the benefits which I and my poor father have
received from your family, Mrs Courtney, nor been ungrateful for them.’

‘And what do you call your conduct of this morning, then? You have
deceived us all, Lizzie,--Mr Courtney, myself, and your poor father. We
thought you a pure and good girl, or you never would have been allowed
to associate with my daughter.’

‘I _am_ pure,’ interposed Lizzie, with the indignant tears standing on
her hot cheeks. ‘I have done nothing to make you regret the favours you
have shown me.’

‘Oh, don’t speak to me like that, Lizzie, when you know that you are
the mother of a child which you dare not own.’

‘I am not! I am NOT!’ cried the girl, half choked with her emotion and
sense of impotency to resent the charge made against her.

‘And I say you _are_,’ continued Mrs Courtney, ‘and all San Diego says
it with me. And, not content with degrading yourself, you would try to
degrade _my_ daughter also. Shame upon you! Is this your gratitude?
You who, but for our bounty would have been pointed at all your days
as the daughter of a felon, who have now lowered yourself beyond the
ordinary level of your sex.’

‘Oh, Mrs Courtney, say what you like to me, but spare the memory of my
dead father!’ cried Lizzie, through her sobs.

‘If I have not spared it, you have only yourself, and your own conduct,
to blame. I have been very good to you hitherto, Lizzie, but I can be
so no longer. You have raised a barrier between us with your own hand.
For the sake of his old friendship for your father, Mr Courtney wishes
you to remain on the plantation, but you are no fit companion for
Maraquita, and from this day you must consider the doors of the White
House are closed against you.’

‘You will not find me attempt to alter your decision, Mrs Courtney. I
came up here this morning to ask Maraquita to do me a simple act of
justice, but she has refused it, and I can no longer look upon her as
my sister and my friend, nor shall I have any wish to seek her society.’

‘Insolent!’ exclaimed Mrs Courtney. ‘Why, under no circumstances would
you be permitted to do so. Maraquita is engaged to be married to the
Governor of the island, Sir Russell Johnstone. In a few weeks she will
be reigning at Government House, and will receive no lady there who
cannot vouch for the possession of an unspotted reputation. So now
perhaps you will see the harm you have done yourself by your impudent
attempt to forge off your own error upon her.’

‘It would have made no difference to my behaviour, madam, if Maraquita
had already been the Governor’s wife. The blameless burden laid upon me
still remains, and she will not lift it by the raising of her little
finger. I suppose it is my fate to suffer and be silent. But I think
the time will come when Quita will be sorry she had not more pity for
me to-day.’

‘Mamma, mamma,’ cried Quita hysterically, ‘tell her to go! I can bear
no more of her reproaches. It is wicked of her to speak like that. You
know that I have done nothing; but if such a story were to come to Sir
Russell’s ears, it might ruin me for ever.’

‘It shall _not_ come to his ears!’ exclaimed Mrs Courtney angrily; ‘and
if you attempt to repeat it, Elizabeth Fellows, I will have your name,
and your dead father’s name, branded from one end of San Diego to the
other until not a soul in the island shall speak to you. See if I do
not.’

‘You will never have the opportunity to carry out your cruel threat,
madam. I have told your daughter, and I tell you, that my vow of
secrecy to my beloved father is sacred, and nothing shall make me break
it. From this hour, I shall never mention the subject to any living
creature again.’

And with those words Liz turned on her heel and walked out of the White
House. As she disappeared, Maraquita threw herself into her mother’s
arms in a burst of tears.

‘Oh, I am lost--I am lost!’ she cried, trembling with fear. ‘We have
made her angry, and she may go and tell the story everywhere, from
revenge. How I wish I had never seen De Courcelles. It was wicked of
him to take advantage of me like that. And all the time he was engaged
to be married to Lizzie. Oh, mother, I hate him--_I hate him!_ I wish
that he was dead!’

It is the proof of an ephemeral and fancied passion that directly
misfortune or peril comes upon it, it turns to reproaching and
dislike. There is little need to say that Maraquita’s love for Henri
de Courcelles was founded on a basis of self-esteem. Had it been
otherwise, their mutual error would have made her cling all the closer
to him as her one haven of safety.

‘If he _is_ engaged to her, my dear,’ replied Mrs Courtney, with a view
to consolation, ‘so much the better. They are a very suitable pair,
and their marriage would rid you of a troublesome suitor. I have heard
something of it before, but subsequent events made me think I was
mistaken. But I don’t like Monsieur de Courcelles. I consider him a
dangerous enemy, and should be glad to know that he had settled down in
life.’

‘But you _promised_ me that papa should send him away from Beauregard,’
said Quita fearfully.

‘And so he shall, my love, as soon as ever we are on the hill range.
You may rest assured of that. Only we have no power to send him out of
San Diego, and he may prove troublesome to us yet. However, I have my
own story to tell papa, and it is one that will provide against any
emergency. But the first thing to be done, Quita, is to get you away;
and the next, to make you Lady Johnstone. Then we shall be perfectly
safe.’

‘You will take care that no one else comes in to see me to-day,’ said
Quita languidly, ‘for I feel quite worn out by the annoyance I have
undergone?’

‘Certainly, my dearest girl. Jessica shall see that you are not
disturbed. And now try and sleep, Quita, and don’t be afraid that there
will be any repetition of so disagreeable a scene. I think I have let
Miss Lizzie have a piece of my mind, and that she will see I mean
what I said. Depend upon it, my dear, that no ill-natured stories or
repetitions can ever harm you in the future. The girl is too honest
to break her word; and if she suffers a little from keeping it, she
deserves as much, for her mean attempt to coerce you. Now, you must
promise me to think no more about the matter.’

Maraquita gave the required promise, because she wanted to be left
alone; but as she lay in the silent and shaded room, the description
that her adopted sister had given her of little waxen hands and
fingers, of two dark wistful eyes, and a baby mouth beginning to smile,
recurred again and again to her, until something very like the longing
of motherhood stirred in her bosom, and made her sob herself to sleep.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER VI.


Liz Fellows went home that day sadder than she had been before. Her
lover’s defalcation had been a natural sequence to the misfortune
that had overtaken her, compared to this. He had judged her harshly,
and without proof, but he at least believed (or she thought he did)
that she had been untrue to him, and his anger and contempt were
those of a dishonoured man. But Maraquita’s conduct admitted of no
such palliation. She _knew_ better than any one else, that Liz was
innocent of the charge laid against her, and yet she could coolly
deny the fact, and appeal to her mother to join her in turning her
adopted sister from their doors. She could shield herself behind the
humiliation of her friend,--deny her maternity, and delegate her sacred
duties--her most holy feelings--to another woman.

‘Feelings! Duties!’ Liz stamped her foot impatiently, as the terms
occurred to her mind. Maraquita _had_ no feelings, and recognised
no duty. She was lower than the feeble little animals, who would
die sooner than desert their young. She had brought a helpless
infant--presumably the infant of her lover--into the world, and would
not even acknowledge it was hers. _Who_ was the father of this child,
thought Liz, that he could stand by quietly and see the desertion
of his offspring? Had _he_ no natural instincts, any more than the
partner of his sin? Would they _both_ leave their infant to the tender
mercies of the world, whilst they went their own ways--one, to be
married to the Governor of San Diego--the other, Heaven best knew
where? Well, she had staked her last chance, and lost it. Henri de
Courcelles would never now receive the proof of her innocence. He was
lost to her for ever, and she must bear the burden of shame laid upon
her guiltless head as best she might. As she re-entered the bungalow, a
wail from Quita’s hapless infant smote her with compassion.

‘My poor little orphan!’ she exclaimed, as she took it in her arms.
‘You are an outcast as well as myself. You have no parents worthy of
the name, and I shall never know the joy of being a mother. We must
comfort each other under this great calamity as best we may. They say
you are my little daughter, and since they say so, I almost wish you
were. But I will love you like a daughter, and teach you to love me
like a mother, and so you shall comfort my bruised heart, and I will
try and make your life happy.’

Up to that moment Rosa had fed and washed the baby, and slept with it
in her arms, but now Lizzie took all these sweet maternal duties into
her own hands. She nursed it all that day, and when night came she laid
it in her own bed. When it was fairly asleep, and Rosa had run over to
the negroes’ quarters to chat with her friends, Liz sat down to her
sewing in the sitting-room, calmer and less perplexed than she had been
for days past.

Up to that time she had cherished hope, but now all hope was over. She
knew the worst. It was bitterly hard to know it, but at all events
suspense was at an end, and there was no new trouble to learn. As she
sat by the shaded lamplight, wondering if Mr Courtney knew the name
of her father’s family, and if the knowledge could be of any use to
herself, she heard a light footstep creeping softly along the verandah,
a footstep which she recognised at once, and which she had been wont to
jump up and welcome. But now Liz sat still, with burning cheeks bent
over her needlework. If Maraquita wished to come to any terms with her,
she must be the one to propose them. Liz had prayed her last prayer to
the companion of her childhood. Presently a very low and fearful voice
called her by her name.

‘Lizzie, Lizzie! Are you quite alone?’

But Lizzie refused to answer, and Maraquita was compelled to advance
into the room. She looked very white and scared, and the folds of her
long mantle fell round a fragile figure.

‘Lizzie! Why will you not speak to me? Papa and mamma have gone to the
theatre with Sir Russell Johnstone; but I excused myself on the plea of
a headache, so that I might come and see you.’

‘And what do you want with me?’ demanded Lizzie coldly.

‘Cannot you guess? I am so unhappy at what took place this morning. I
shall not rest until things are right again between us.’

‘I do not understand you, Quita! I conclude you spoke the truth this
morning, or what you believed to be the truth, and I have nothing more
to say upon the subject.’

‘Oh, Lizzie, have pity on me! You know it was not the truth; but what
can I do? Everything that makes life valuable to me seems slipping
through my fingers. I could not make up my mind to confess to my own
ruin.’

‘And so you would ruin me instead--I, who have been like a sister to
you? You would save your own character at the expense of mine?’

‘But not for always, Lizzie. Only let me get this marriage over, and I
shall be better able to see my way before me. And I shall be rich, too,
and able to reward you for your kindness. The child shall never be any
burden to you, Lizzie. You may depend upon me for that.’

‘And do you suppose I would take your money?’ cried the other
contemptuously. ‘Do you ask me to sell my honour? You accuse me
publicly of being the unmarried mother of this child, and then offer
to pay me for the disgrace. You are only heaping insult upon insult,
Quita. You had better leave me before you make me forget myself.’

‘Oh, no, Lizzie, I cannot leave you,’ exclaimed the unhappy girl,
drawing nearer to her, ‘until you have heard all I have to say! You
have always been my best friend, Lizzie. As a little child I used to
run to you in every trouble, and trust you to get me out of every
scrape. You will not do less for me now, Lizzie, will you?’

‘You ask too much, Maraquita. You forget that in helping you out of
this danger, I involve myself, in the way which good women dread above
everything. I have done it, but it is at the expense of our friendship.
I can never be friends with you again.’

‘But you must--you _must_!’ cried Quita, falling on her knees, and
hiding her face in Lizzie’s lap, ‘for your father’s sake, Lizzie, if
not for mine.’

‘I have done it for my father’s sake,’ replied Lizzie, as she moved
away from Maraquita’s clasp. ‘Do you suppose I have not been thinking
of _him_ all to-day, and of the promise I made him? Nothing else would
have kept me silent; but it is over now, and we need say no more upon
the subject. I beg of you, Quita, to leave me, and go home again, for
your presence here is very painful to me.’

‘Oh, Lizzie, don’t be so hard! I am not the unfeeling creature you
take me for. It is only fear of my parents that makes me shrink from
confessing the truth. They would kill me, Lizzie, if they knew it. They
would not let me live to disgrace them.’

‘Nonsense!’ exclaimed Lizzie. ‘They would do nothing of the sort. They
would reproach you as they have me, and you richly deserve it. But tell
the truth whilst you are about it, Maraquita. Say that you have no
feeling either for your child or its father (whoever he may be), and I
may believe what you say.’

‘But you are wrong,’ interposed Quita eagerly. ‘I love him dearly, and
I should have loved _it_ also, if I had not been afraid. And I can
prove it to you, Lizzie, for I have come here to-night to see the baby,
and I shall come as often as I can without exciting suspicion. Where is
she? Let me see her at once.’

‘What baby?’ demanded Liz, with affected ignorance.

‘Oh, Liz! how can you ask? Why, my own baby, of course! The one you
have in charge.’

‘I thought you denied this morning that you were a mother, Quita?’

‘I was obliged to do so. What could I say, with mamma or papa liable to
come in at any moment? You might as well have asked me to cut my own
throat. But here, alone with you, I can say anything! I confess it is
mine, Lizzie, and that I knew all about it from the beginning. I told
your dear father everything; and he promised that he and you should
stand my friends, and prevent my secret from being published to the
world.’

‘I have heard all this before,’ said Lizzie, still engaged upon her
sewing.

‘And now you will let me see her, won’t you? You will let me hold her
in my arms for a little while? I must not stay long, for fear that
meddlesome old Jessica should come after me. You will take me to my
baby at once, Lizzie?’

‘No,’ replied the Doctor’s daughter firmly.

‘What do you mean? Isn’t she here?’

‘Yes; but you will not see her.’

‘How dare you keep me from her? She is mine, not yours.’

‘You did not say so this morning.’

‘Ah, but then I was mad!’

‘Are you prepared, then, to take your child back to the White House
with you? Will you confess the lie of which you have been guilty to
your parents, and exonerate me in their eyes of the charge you have
brought against me?’

Maraquita shrank backward.

‘Oh, Liz! that is too much. I should destroy all my prospects at a blow
by such an admission. Besides, it has nothing to do with the matter.
All I want is to see the child. Surely you will not refuse so trifling
a request?’

‘I do refuse it.’

‘But you have no right to do so.’

‘By your own account, Maraquita, I have every right. You declared
before your mother that this child was mine. Therefore I will keep it
as such, and I refuse to let you see her.’

‘And I am determined not to leave the bungalow till I have done so!’
cried Quita, rushing towards the bedroom door.

But Lizzie had reached it before she did, and stood with her back
against the panels.

‘You shall not enter here,’ she said, in a tone of authority.

Then Quita took to beseeching. She fell on her knees again, and held
Lizzie tightly clasped about her feet.

‘Oh, my dear sister, let me see my baby, if only for a minute! I have
been thinking of her ever since this morning, Lizzie,--of the dark eyes
you spoke of,--the tiny waxen hands and feet, and the rosebud mouth;
and I feel as if I should die if I do not have her in my arms, and kiss
her, and tell her that I am her mother.’

‘Will you tell the world so, Maraquita?’

‘You know that I cannot.’

‘Then you will not see your child until you do,’ replied Lizzie, as
she locked the bedroom door, and put the key into her pocket. ‘You
have openly disgraced me by palming on me the consequences of your own
sin. You have denied your motherhood, and given up your most sacred
rights and duties. Well, for your sake, and to conceal your shame, I
accept them; and the first act which I exercise is to keep the child to
myself.’

‘You actually refuse?’ cried Quita, starting to her feet, crimson with
indignation.

‘Emphatically. There is only one way you can secure the privilege, and
that is by an open confession of the truth.’

‘Then I shall never do it! And you may carry the burden to your life’s
end!’ exclaimed Maraquita furiously. ‘And another with it, for you do
not know all. You have never asked me the name of the father of this
child! You came crying to me this morning about Henri de Courcelles,
and how much you loved him, and how anxious he was to discover the
parentage of my baby. He has lied to you! He has made use of this
dilemma to get rid of you; for he knows whose baby this is as well
as I do. He knows the mother and the father of it--for the father is
_himself_!’

She watched the light fade out of Lizzie’s eyes as the cruel truth
smote upon her heart, and she grasped at the back of a chair to save
herself from falling. But when the first shock was over, she refused to
believe the story.

‘_Henri!_’ she exclaimed, in a faint voice. ‘But it is _impossible_!
Henri is--is--_mine_!’

‘He pretended to be!’ cried Quita maliciously, ‘because it was a good
blind for them up at the White House, I suppose, but he has been mine
and mine only for the last twelve months, and he is nearly mad at the
idea of losing me now.’

‘And why must he lose you?’ said Lizzie quickly, forgetting her own
pain in her lover’s wrongs. ‘If what you say is true, why do you not
marry him, and take care of your little child between you?’

Maraquita shrugged her shoulders.

‘Because my people will not hear of such a marriage for me, and think I
should lower myself by becoming the wife of an overseer.’

‘Not so much as you have lowered yourself already, Quita.’

‘Perhaps not, but nobody knows that! And then I am already engaged, so
it is of no use talking about anything else.’

‘Poor Henri,’ sighed Lizzie.

‘I can’t see why he is to be pitied! He knew from the beginning that it
must all end some day. But I little dreamt it would end like this. _I_
am the one who has suffered all the risk and the blame, and yet no one
seems to pity _me_.’

Lizzie was silent. Her heart was burning within her, and yet pride
prevented her speech. It was cruelly humiliating to find that all the
time she had been engaged to be married to De Courcelles, he had been
carrying on with another girl, and had even had the audacity to make
his own fault the putative cause for breaking off his engagement to
her. She could not decide at the moment whether she loved or hated him
the most, his conduct appeared in so mean and despicable a light.

‘You are right, Maraquita,’ she continued, after a pause. ‘He is not
worthy of your pity or mine. He has cruelly deceived us both--and you
perhaps the most, since even, if he loved you best, he has served you
worst! Even now--in the first pitiless agony of hearing your news--I
can thank God I do not stand in your position. And if you should ever
think better of your decision regarding him, remember I shall not stand
in your light, for from this day Henri de Courcelles will be less than
nothing to me.’

‘But the child!--you will not desert the child?’ exclaimed Quita, with
something like maternal anxiety in her voice.

Liz shuddered.

‘It will be a double burthen to me now,’ she answered; ‘but I have
already resolved to do as my father would have wished me, and I will
not shirk my self-imposed duty. I will do my utmost for the child.’

‘Oh, Lizzie, you are very good! You make me feel so ashamed of myself,’
said Quita, attempting to kiss her adopted sister.

But Lizzie sprung aside from her.

‘Don’t touch me!’ she cried. ‘Don’t stay near me any longer, or I
shall be unable to conceal the loathing I feel for your conduct! False
lover--false mother--false friend! Oh, Maraquita, Maraquita! it
would have been better if God had called you to Himself when you were
as innocent as your unfortunate baby! You and he, between you, have
destroyed all my faith in human nature.’

And Liz, throwing herself into a chair, and laying down her head upon
the table, sobbed so bitterly and unrestrainedly, that Quita, terrified
at the sound, which might attract spectators to spread abroad the news
of her being in the bungalow, fled out into the darkness again, and
made her way back to the White House.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER VII.


Mr Courtney was quite as proud as his wife of the grand marriage his
daughter was about to make. He was inordinately fond of Maraquita,
and would have considered her a fit match for a prince of the blood
royal. At the same time, he was only a planter, and it was a great
thing to know that his child was going to marry the highest man in the
island. He had plenty of money to bestow on her--Sir Russell Johnstone
had opened his eyes when his future father-in-law had mentioned the
dowry he would receive with his bride--and when Maraquita had obtained
rank and position, his best wishes for her would be gratified. He
was sitting in the room which he called his office, and had just
dismissed Monsieur de Courcelles, when his wife entered the apartment.
Mr Courtney had had occasion to find fault with the overseer that
morning. He had not attended to several important matters during the
week, and seemed sluggish and indifferent to his master’s orders. Mr
Courtney suspected that he had been drinking also, and accused him of
the fact, and De Courcelles’ answers had been too sullen to please him.
He was brooding over the change in the young man’s behaviour, when Mrs
Courtney came panting into the room. It was not often she honoured her
husband with her presence during business hours, and he saw at once
that she had some communication of importance to make to him.

‘Well, my dear, what is it? Quita not worse this morning, I hope?’

‘Oh, no, Mr Courtney! The dear child grows stronger every hour, under
the knowledge of her delightful prospects, and I am most anxious that
nothing should occur to mar her recovery, for dear Sir Russell is
naturally anxious to have the wedding as soon as possible.’

‘Of course; but that is for you and Quita to decide. You know that I
shall spare no money to expedite matters. The sooner the dear girl is
Lady Johnstone, the better.’

‘So _I_ say, Mr Courtney,’ replied his wife, looking anxiously round.
‘But are you likely to be undisturbed for a few minutes? Have you
dismissed Monsieur de Courcelles for the day?’

‘Yes, and not in the best of humours. He is getting lazy, Nita, and I
am not sure that he is keeping as sober as he should be. He gave me
something very like insolence this morning. Do you know if anything is
wrong with him? Is his engagement with Lizzie Fellows still going on?’

‘Oh, Mr Courtney, this is the very subject on which I wished to see
you. De Courcelles has been behaving very badly, in my estimation.
You will hardly believe, even when I tell you so, that he has had the
presumption to lift his eyes to our Maraquita, and to swear he will be
revenged if she marries any other man.’

‘_Impossible!_’ cried Mr Courtney, starting. He had had his own
suspicions respecting the young overseer’s admiration for his daughter
and heiress, and, on a former occasion, he had told him so, but he had
never had any idea that it had come to an open avowal between them.
‘Do you mean to tell me,’ he continued, ‘that De Courcelles has had
the audacity to address Maraquita on this subject, and to make her
cognisant of his affection?’

‘Oh, Mr Courtney, where can your eyes be? How blind you men are! Why,
he has been at the poor child’s feet for twelve months past; and Quita
has kept him gently off, fearing to deprive you of a valuable servant;
but now it has gone too far, and I feel it is time I spoke.’

‘I thought he admired her, and told him there was no hope for him, some
little time back; but he assured me I was mistaken. I offered, at the
same time, to forward his marriage with Lizzie Fellows, but he declared
that there was no engagement between them.’

‘Then he has been deceiving you all round, and is not worthy of your
trust and confidence. He _was_ engaged to Lizzie. She told Quita so
yesterday, only he broke it off on account of this disgraceful affair
at the bungalow. But all the while he has been persecuting our poor
girl with his addresses, until she is positively afraid of him, or what
he may do.’

‘But what can he do? Surely he has not dared to threaten her?’

‘He has said he will kill her at the very altar, sooner than she shall
marry Sir Russell, or any other man, and has thrown the poor child into
such a state of distress and perturbation, that I feel certain, unless
her mind can be set at complete rest concerning him, it will greatly
retard her recovery.’

‘But it _must_ be set at rest. This is quite unbearable!’ exclaimed
the planter, striding up and down the room; ‘De Courcelles must leave
Beauregard at once. I shall give him his dismissal this afternoon.’

‘Not this afternoon, Mr Courtney. Wait until we are safe on the hill
range, and then send him straight away. Maraquita will have no peace
until she hears that he is gone.’

‘Fancy the presumption of his aspiring to the hand of our daughter!’
continued Mr Courtney indignantly. ‘A man without a sixpence beyond
his weekly stipend, and no chance of increasing that. It is the most
barefaced impudence I ever heard of. He shall get the sack before he is
a day older.’

‘But you will do it on some other pretence I hope, Mr Courtney. You
will not bring in Quita’s name. I should be sorry for it to get known
that he dared to fall in love with her. People are so ill-natured; they
might say she had given the fellow some encouragement.’

‘They will not dare to say anything against _Lady Russell_,’ said the
father triumphantly. ‘When do you start for the hill range, my dear;
and when is the wedding to be?’

‘We go to-morrow morning. I have ordered our palanquins for four
o’clock, and Joseph has arranged the coolie service as far as the
Government bungalow. Quita wanted to ride up with Sir Russell, but I
am afraid of taxing her strength as yet. As for the wedding, they have
fixed it between themselves for the fourteenth of next month. Quita’s
things cannot all be ready, but Sir Russell is willing to take her as
she is, until the trousseau is complete. I never saw a man more in love
in my life. He is quite infatuated with her.’

‘And well he may be, for there is not a prettier nor sweeter girl on
all the islands. Well, my dear, De Courcelles must go, there is no
doubt of that, unless, indeed, he will marry Lizzie Fellows. _That_
would put a stop to all unpleasantness at once.’

‘_Marry Lizzie Fellows!_’ echoed Mrs Courtney; ‘what, after he has been
in love with our Quita! Well, I should be very much surprised if he
could do that.’

‘But he was engaged to her (as you say), or nearly so. Poor Fellows
told me as much himself. And it would be but reasonable for De
Courcelles to settle down. He can’t have Maraquita, that’s quite
certain, and he might do worse than fulfil his word to poor Lizzie.’

‘What, after she has disgraced herself?’

‘My dear, are you certain she _has_ disgraced herself? She assured
me most solemnly that child was not her own, and had nothing to
do with her, and I have never known Lizzie tell a lie. It is as
incomprehensible to me as it is to you, and I cannot understand my old
friend Fellows leaving the poor girl in such a painful position. Still,
you must not forget that I have been just as true to him as Lizzie
evidently is to some other person; and we should be the last people
to disbelieve her word, because she is unable to give us any further
explanation of it.’

Mrs Courtney had greatly fidgeted and changed colour under her
husband’s kindly pleading.

‘Oh, Mr Courtney, I really have no patience with you! Do you honestly
think any woman would incur such a public disgrace, without making an
effort to clear her character? I questioned Lizzie closely myself only
yesterday, and she refused to open her lips, even to _me_, who have
known her from a baby. It is quite incredible, and there is only one
solution of the mystery--that she pretends to possess this stern sense
of honour, in order to hide her want of it.’

‘Is it possible that De Courcelles can be the father of this child?’
said Mr Courtney musingly, hitting the right nail on the head without
knowing it.

‘I daresay he is! I shouldn’t be surprised at anything I might hear of
Monsieur de Courcelles.’

‘Well, my dear, I suppose he must go,’ returned her husband, with a
sigh; ‘and I will speak to him as soon as ever you have left the White
House. I cannot have Maraquita annoyed; and indeed if he has behaved
shabbily to poor Lizzie, it is not right he should continue to live in
her sight. So you may consider that matter settled.’

Upon which assurance Mrs Courtney returned to her own room, to promise
her daughter that she should never again be subjected to her cast-off
lover’s appeals or reproaches; and the following morning De Courcelles
watched their palanquins leaving Beauregard, from the shelter of the
oleander thicket. A few hours after, he walked as usual into the
presence of his employer. When the day’s business had been disposed of,
the overseer rose to go, but Mr Courtney detained him.

‘Take a chair for a few minutes, De Courcelles, I have something of
importance to say to you. You may remember a brief conversation
that took place between us a few weeks back, on the occasion of Miss
Courtney’s illness. I warned you that it would be wise to keep your
admiration of her within bounds, and you assured me that you had done
so. My wife tells me a different story. She says that Maraquita is both
distressed and annoyed by your evident predilection for her, and I
cannot have my daughter annoyed. Therefore I think it is best that we
should part.’

Mr Courtney was an honest man by nature, unused to _finesse_ or
intrigue of any kind, and he had quite forgotten his wife’s caution
with respect to introducing Quita’s name as a reason for the overseer’s
dismissal. He had gone straight at his fences, and the leap was over.
Henri de Courcelles flushed dark crimson as the subject was thus openly
mentioned to him.

‘I am quite unaware how I can have annoyed Miss Courtney,’ he replied.
‘I have not even seen her since her recovery.’

‘Is that the case?’ demanded the planter. ‘Then perhaps it was before.
But anyway, as she is so shortly to be married to the Governor of San
Diego, you must see the propriety of discontinuing any false hopes you
may have entertained concerning her.’

‘Miss Courtney’s engagement is, then, a settled thing?’ said De
Courcelles bitterly.

‘Certainly, and the wedding-day is fixed for the fourteenth of next
month. My daughter will soon rank as the highest lady in the island,
and any kindness which, as a young and thoughtless girl, she may
have shown you (or any other friend) in the past, must not form any
pretension for claiming to be on familiar terms with the Governor’s
wife, or Sir Russell Johnstone might resent it as an insult.’

‘I understand you perfectly, sir, and Lady Johnstone need fear no
recognition of any claims I may have had upon Miss Courtney, from me.’

‘_Claims!_ I do not understand the term, De Courcelles. What _claims_
could you possibly have upon my daughter? You are forgetting yourself.
Miss Courtney can never have been anything to you but a gracious young
mistress and friend.’

‘That is how it may be, sir. Miss Courtney knows her own secrets best,
and doubtless she has chosen wisely in electing to become the wife of
the Governor. Rank and position cover a multitude of sins.’

Mr Courtney did not like the style of address adopted by his overseer,
but he scarcely knew how to resent it. He was half afraid to tell
him to speak out. What if Maraquita had really been light of conduct,
and employed her leisure time in flirting with his overseer? It
would be a very embarrassing discovery, but not an unnatural one,
when De Courcelles’ extreme beauty and grace of form were taken into
consideration. So he thought it prudent to change the topic.

‘Well, well,’ he said testily, ‘we are not here to discuss Miss
Courtney’s conduct, but your own. You have not been quite the same as
usual lately, De Courcelles. I have observed an unsteadiness, and a
disposition to sloth in you, which has grieved me. Come now, let us
talk this matter over like two men of the world. We will suppose you
_have_ had a slight predilection for my daughter. I am not surprised at
it, and I do not blame you; but you must have known it could never be
anything more. Well, in a few weeks she will be married, and pass out
of your life. What is the use of spoiling the rest of it for her sake?
Why not settle down and make a home for yourself? If you were married,
all this little unpleasantness would be smoothed away.’

‘That is easy to say, Mr Courtney, but not so easy to do.’

‘I don’t agree with you. There is a nice girl close to your elbow, of
whom I spoke to you at the same time I mentioned my daughter. I mean
Lizzie Fellows. Ah, you start! You have heard this rumour about her, I
suppose, in common with others, and fancy it is true. But I am sure it
is not, De Courcelles. I have known Lizzie from a child, and I would
stake my life upon her honesty.’

‘You allude to the infant of which she was left in charge, sir?’

‘I am glad to hear you mention it like that. It proves you believe
her story. You told me there was no engagement between you, but Mrs
Courtney informs me there was, and you broke it off on account of this
child. But women jump at conclusions so: perhaps she is mistaken.’

De Courcelles was quite capable of defending himself.

‘Miss Fellows and I were _not_ regularly engaged at the time you spoke
to me, sir, nor have we been since. Only when Lizzie refused to give
me any explanation concerning her nurse-child, I said in my haste that
want of confidence was the death of friendship, and that we had better
not meet again.’

‘And you regret so hasty a decision?’

‘Why do you ask me, sir?’

‘Because if you and Lizzie like each other, I should be pleased to see
you married. I am fond of the girl, and consider her a sacred charge;
and marriage would silence these cruel slanders against her, sooner
than anything else. If you can make up your minds on the subject,
De Courcelles, I will do for you what I promised before--raise your
salary, furnish the Oleander Bungalow afresh, and settle it on you and
your wife, and all these little disagreeables will be forgotten before
three months are over our heads.’

‘And if not, sir?’ inquired the overseer hastily.

‘If _not_, De Courcelles, we must part. I am sorry to say it, but I
shall consider your refusal (or Lizzie’s) as a proof that the less you
are about the White House in the future the better. Not the slightest
taint--not even the bare suspicion of one--must rest on the fair name
of the future Lady Johnstone.’

‘I understand you, Mr Courtney, and I will consider your proposal. How
soon do you expect to get my answer?’

‘Not until you are quite prepared to give it me. You have plenty of
time before you. My wife and daughter will be away on the hills for a
month, and I have no wish to part with an old friend in such a hurry.
Think of it well, De Courcelles. I will look over any of the little
derelictions of duty to which I have alluded, in consideration of the
disappointment which you must have suffered; but my decision is final
with regard to Miss Fellows. You must either marry her, or leave my
service.’

De Courcelles left the planter’s presence grinding his teeth with
rage. He had burned, while listening to his talk about his daughter’s
marriage and future prospects, to tell him to his face that Maraquita
was, to all intents and purposes, _his_ wife, and the mother of the
child at the bungalow. But he dared not! He was afraid not only of
the planter but of the negro population, if such a story got wind in
the plantation. Revenge is sometimes very swift and sure in the West
Indies, especially when the natives are in a state of insubordination.
Besides, he would gain nothing by such an admission. It would not
give him back Maraquita--faithless, perjured Maraquita, who, having
slipped from his grasp into the arms of the Governor of San Diego,
had instigated her parents, by a tissue of falsehoods, to dismiss him
summarily from Beauregard. And it would have robbed him of the hope of
revenge--a hope sweeter to a Spanish Creole even than love. As Henri
de Courcelles thought of it, his hand tightened over the stiletto he
always carried in his belt. Banishment from Beauregard would mean to
sit down for the remainder of his life under this bitter wrong, without
the satisfaction of feeling he had avenged it. At all hazards he must
remain near this false love of his. She should never feel secure from
him. He would appear before her in her most triumphant moments, and
make her tremble with the fear that he was about to accuse her openly
of her secret crime. Maraquita Courtney should never know another
peaceful moment, whilst he lived to terrify her. But the opportunity
depended on his marrying Lizzie Fellows. Well, if it must be so, it
must be so. Henri de Courcelles, strolling down the path between the
rows of coffee trees, and caressing his handsome moustaches as he
went, seemed to have no doubt that he had but to ask to obtain. The
conceit of men, where women are concerned, knows no bounds. Every
woman, according to their creed, is only too ready to fly into their
arms. The good old days when knights were not considered worthy to ask
for a lady’s hand until they had achieved some doughty deed to make
her proud of them, are gone for ever. Yet, if a girl is particular, or
indifferent, or hard to please, she is voted to be either a prude or
a jilt. The rougher sex require a few hard raps occasionally, to keep
them in order, and the woman who puts them in their place, confers a
benefit on the whole of her kind. As Monsieur de Courcelles strolled
along, his footsteps carried him in the direction of Lizzie’s bungalow,
and thinking no time like the present, he halted on the threshold, and
called her by her name. The recollection of how he had last left her
presence made him hesitate to walk boldly into it, but he was quite
confident that he had but to ask her forgiveness to obtain it. Lizzie
was just about to visit her sick negroes. She was dressed in a white
gown, covered with an apron and a high bib of brown holland, and on her
head she wore a broad-brimmed hat, tied with a black ribbon. She looked
pale and weary, but the look of perplexity was gone from her face, and
her general expression was calm. She was filling her basket with such
medicines as were necessary, when she heard her name called in the old
familiar tones of De Courcelles. As the sound struck on her ear, she
turned even whiter than before, but resentment prevented her losing her
presence of mind.

‘What do you want with me?’ she demanded sharply.

‘Only a few words of explanation and apology. May I come in, Lizzie? I
have been longing to do so ever since we parted.’

‘You can enter if you wish it, monsieur, but I cannot imagine what you
can possibly have to say to me. I have looked upon our last meeting as
a final one.’

‘But may you not change your opinion of it, and of me?’ replied the
overseer, as he entered the room, and advanced to her side. ‘I know I
sinned against you grossly, almost beyond forgiveness, but you must
make allowance for the whirlwind of passion I was in,--for the awful
doubt that had assailed me.’

‘I cannot admit that as any excuse for your conduct, monsieur. You had
my word that I was innocent, and you were supposed to be my friend.
There is no friendship without trust and confidence.’

‘Do not say “_supposed_,” Lizzie. I _was_ your friend, as I am now, and
ever will be, if you will forgive my hasty words, and reinstate me in
my old position.’

‘That can never be,’ she rejoined hastily. ‘You were _supposed_ to be
much more than my friend, but you deceived me all along.’

‘How can you speak so? How did I deceive you, Lizzie?’

‘I would rather not discuss the subject, monsieur,’ said Lizzie, taking
up her basket. ‘This is my time for visiting my patients, and they will
be expecting me. I must wish you good-morning.’

‘No, no; I cannot let you go until we have arrived at some
explanation!’ exclaimed De Courcelles, detaining her by the folds of
her dress. ‘You accuse me of deceiving you, and yet I thought my fault
lay in being too outspoken. I know I shouldn’t have said what I did.
I regret it deeply, from the bottom of my heart, and I humbly ask your
pardon for the implied affront. Is not that sufficient?’

‘It is more than sufficient,’ replied Lizzie coolly, as she disengaged
her gown from his grasp, ‘and more than I wished you to say. However,
I accept your apology, and we will say no more about it. Now, will you
please to let me go?’

‘No, you must stay! Put off your visits till this afternoon, and hear
me out. I have not told you half my story. Have you quite forgotten
that we are engaged to be married, Lizzie?’

‘I have not forgotten it, but I have ceased to believe in it. You
ruptured our engagement of your own free will.’

‘But that was in my anger, and a few angry words, Lizzie, are powerless
to undo the tie which had existed for a twelvemonth. I did not mean
what I said. I have regretted it ever since, and I am here this morning
to ask you to forgive it, and let our engagement stand as it did
before.’

He was drawing closer to her, confident in his powers of fascination,
but she pushed him from her.

‘Monsieur de Courcelles, I am surprised at you! I am surprised now
to think that I should ever have believed in you, or thought the
engagement you entered into with me anything but a blind for your more
serious intentions in another quarter.’

He started backward with astonishment, little dreaming that she knew
the whole of Maraquita’s sad history.

‘I don’t understand you,’ he gasped. ‘I have never been engaged to any
woman but yourself. I don’t desire to marry any other woman. I came
here to-day with the express purpose of asking you to condone the past,
and marry me as soon as may be convenient to you.’

A few weeks before, how her heart would have beat at such a proposal,
how her cheek would have flamed assent, and her humid eyes have sought
his with grateful love. But now she sprang aside as if he had insulted
her, and flashed defiance on him to repeat the offence.

‘How _dare_ you?’ she panted. ‘How dare you speak to me of
marriage--you, who have treated me with scorn and contumely?’

‘But I have acknowledged my error, Lizzie. Surely you are not a woman
to resent a fault for ever. You _used_ to love me, I am sure of that.’

‘Don’t be _too_ sure,’ she interposed hastily. ‘I loved _something_, I
know,--some creature conjured up by my imagination, but not the man of
flesh and blood I see before me. For I did not know you then, and no
one can love an unknown person.’

‘Lizzie, you are very hard upon me! I am not perfect, any more than
other men, but I don’t know what I can have done to merit such bitter
taunts from you. At all events, try and know me now as the man who
loves you, and entreats you to marry him. Lizzie, be my wife! Mr
Courtney is aware of our attachment, and has made a very generous offer
of assistance, if we marry each other. If your affection for me was
ever true, you will not refuse me now.’

‘My affection for you _was_ true,’ replied Lizzie, looking him full in
the face; ‘and all the more does that make me say I will never marry
you now. _Never!_ Not if there was not another man in the world.’

‘But _why_? Surely you will give me a reason for your refusal, Lizzie.’

‘My reason is soon given, monsieur. Maraquita--my earliest friend and
my adopted sister--was here last night. She came to ask permission to
see the child, of whom both of you have accused me of being the mother,
and I refused her. I told her since I had to bear the blame, I would
also maintain the authority over it. And then--in a moment of passion,
I suppose--somewhat like that moment which influenced you basely to get
out of your engagement to me by means of a lie--she told me the name
of the child’s father. _Now_, do you wonder that I say that henceforth
there never can be any communion between you and me, except of the
most ordinary kind. The man who could take advantage of his own sin to
ruin the character of an innocent woman, will never make a good husband
to any one, and I have done with you for ever!’

Henri de Courcelles turned his face away to the open window, the dark
blood mantling for very shame into his cheeks.

‘I have nothing to say for myself,’ he muttered presently. ‘I am only
a man, and men are very open to temptations such as these. But if I
have sinned, I have also suffered. I was led on by a heartless woman,
who has deserted her child, and thrown me over for the first suitor who
presents himself with money and position in his hands. I would have
married her willingly, but she refused to marry me. She is an infernal
jilt, with as false a heart and tongue as ever woman had; and she has
been my ruin. She is nothing to me now, and she never will be. If you
took compassion on me, Lizzie, and healed my sore heart with your pure
affection, you should never have reason to complain of even my thoughts
straying that way. I hate the very name of her.’

‘That is no palliation of your fault, in my eyes, monsieur. I should
feel for you more if you told me her desertion had made you miserable.
But why do you not appeal to Mr Courtney to stop this unnatural
marriage? Did he know the truth, he would surely never allow his
daughter so to prostitute herself.’

‘What good should I effect by that, Lizzie? Mr Courtney would only
banish me at once from Beauregard. Do you suppose he would give up the
prospect of Maraquita becoming the Governor’s wife, for the sake of
an overseer? Besides, he already suspects that I admire her, and has
told me as much, with the adjoinder that the only condition on which I
can retain my situation is to fulfil my engagement with you, and settle
down at the Oleander Bungalow as a married man. In that case, he has
promised to refurnish the house, and raise my salary. So, you see, we
should be very comfortable; and, if you wished it, you could retain
your medical appointment over the plantation.’

‘And so _I_ am to be made the scapegoat to bear your sins into the
wilderness, and to patch up your injured character at Beauregard! You
have mistaken me altogether. I am capable, I think, of making great
sacrifices for a man who loves me, but not for one who rightly belongs
to another woman. You will not retain your position at Beauregard
through _my_ means.’

‘Then I am ruined,’ returned the overseer fiercely, ‘and I owe my
downfall to you two women! You have destroyed my life between you. I
shall be turned off the plantation, without a prospect of employment.
And if I become desperate, it will be laid at your door.’

‘At Maraquita’s, if you please, monsieur, but not at mine. I would
have clung to you through good and evil report, had you been true to
me. But I cannot forget the cruel infamy you put upon me, knowing it
to be false. It is a crime past a woman’s forgiveness,--a calumny that
will cling to me through life, even though you married me in church
to-morrow. Yet I would rather go down to the grave enduring it, than
become your wife.’

‘It is finished then!’ exclaimed De Courcelles, seizing his hat and
rushing from the apartment, ‘and I will trouble you no more on the
subject, now or ever,’--and the next moment he was striding hurriedly
towards his home.

Lizzie trembled as he left her, but she did not weep. Her stock of
tears was exhausted. And had they not been, a cry from the infant in
the next room would have dried them at their fount. She summoned Rosa,
who was basking asleep in the verandah, to its assistance, and with a
deep, deep sigh for her dead past, lifted her basket, and took her way
to the coolie quarters.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER VIII.


Jerusha, the East Indian coolie, sat at the door of her hut, nursing
her baby on her knee, and with a very sullen expression on her
countenance. Indeed, all the hands on Beauregard had borne more or
less of a rebellious look of late. They had no particular grudge
against Mr Courtney, who was a kind, if rather an indolent master,
delegating all his duties to his overseer; but they detested Henri
de Courcelles, and the accounts of his cruelty, and selfishness, and
dishonesty, formed the staple portion of their conversation. His very
beauty, and evident self-consciousness of it, the vast superiority
which he assumed over them, and the rigour with which he carried out
the rules of the plantation, all combined to set the coolies against
him, and they thirsted to find out something which might degrade him
from his office. The reports from the Fort, too, the constant attempts
at rising which had to be quelled, had incited them on to imitation,
and altogether the plantation workers were seething under a sense of
wrong, and ripe for rebellion. Poor little Jerusha, with her handsome
half-caste baby in her arms, might have furnished them with a pretext
for denouncing the overseer, had not her case been too common a one
amongst them. But to the girl it meant the devastation of her life.
She had not courted her destiny. She had been landed in San Diego, a
poor trembling Indian coolie amongst a herd of fellow-sufferers, who
had been persuaded to leave Calcutta under a promise of good wages,
and plenty of food, and very little work, and after a voyage of four
months (during which they had been herded between decks like so many
swine), had been marched ashore at San Diego, too weak and frightened
and disappointed to have any hope left in them, unless it were that
they might die. They had been all standing together for hire, when
De Courcelles had sauntered by and picked out the likely ones for Mr
Courtney’s plantation. Jerusha well remembered how he came like a
prince amongst them, and how handsome he had looked in his white linen
suit and broad-brimmed hat, with the blue silk handkerchief knotted at
his throat, and the crimson rose blooming in his button-hole,--and
when he had stopped beside her and spoken to her in his low soft tone,
she had thought him more glorious still. She had not sought him out,
this poor little Indian girl, but he had pertinaciously come after her.
He had asked for her the very day after she had entered the plantation,
and put so many questions as to whether her hut was comfortable, and
her food sufficient, that Jerusha was quite bewildered. And then he
had given her new clothes, smart dresses--such as the natives love
to deck themselves in--and gold earrings for her ears; and the usual
consequence followed. She fell to the tempter’s seductive arts. It was
a sort of heaven to the poor untaught coolie to be selected from all
the other girls to be the favourite of the handsome young overseer. She
never troubled her head to think how long his preference would last.
She knew that he would never marry her--she would have laughed at so
ludicrous an idea--and yet she fancied somehow that her happiness would
never end, and was terribly disappointed and bitterly incensed when the
day came that De Courcelles ordered her back to her quarters with the
other coolies, and refused to make any difference between them. She had
reproached him with his conduct on the occasion which has been related,
but, if anything, it had had the effect of making him more severe with
her, and Jerusha realised at last that all was over between them,
and that she had been only a tool and a plaything to minister to his
short-lived pleasure. She was pondering resentfully on his neglect as
she sat on the ground, with both her hands clasped round her knees to
make a cradle for her little Henri, as she would persist in calling the
child, greatly to the annoyance of the overseer. Henri was a beautiful
infant, large and round and buoyant, with much more of the father than
the mother in his appearance. He was gaily dressed in a short calico
shirt of red and white striped cotton, with bangles on his fat brown
arms, and a string of blue beads round his neck, and as Jerusha rocked
him to and fro, and heard him crow with delight at the exercise, the
gloom on her face would suddenly disappear, and she would seize the boy
in her arms and kiss him vehemently. As she was thus amusing herself, a
shadow fell between her and the setting sun, and old Jessica from the
White House stood before her. Jessica had been much put out by her
young mistress leaving her behind when she started for the hill range.
It was the first time such a thing had occurred, and the old nurse felt
it accordingly. Had she not waited on Missy Quita, hand and foot, ever
since she was a baby? and if she _had_ been sharp enough to discover
her secret, had she not kept it as faithfully as Missy would have done
herself? And why should Missy Quita leave her behind just as she had
obtained her wish and was on the road to make the great marriage that
Jessica had always foretold for her? The faithful old negress felt
aggrieved; and when sunset came, and Mr Courtney had gone out for his
evening drive, and the White House seemed deserted, her heart turned to
her old friends in the negro quarters, and she walked down to have a
chat with them, and unburden herself of her troubles.

‘Eh, Jerusha, gal!’ she exclaimed, as she caught sight of the young
East Indian, ‘and how’s de baby? He berry fine boy, Jerusha. He make
big strong coolie, bime-by.’

‘Coolie,’ repeated Jerusha scornfully. ‘My little Henri never make
coolie boy. I tell you dat, Aunty Jess. Henri’s a lord’s son, and he’ll
be gennelman, bime-by.’

‘You go ways, Jerusha; you talking nonsense! Lords is only for great
ladies like my Missy Quita.’

‘Missy Quita going to marry a lord?’ said Jerusha inquisitively, as
Jessica took a seat beside her.

‘Wall, he’s not quite a lord yet, but I ’spect he will be bime-by. But
he’s a great rich gennelman, and the Governor of San Diego, and that’s
next to being a king--jes’ so! But I wish my missy take me up to hills
with her. I never been lef’ behind before. I can’t tell why my missy
think to go widout me.’

‘Praps she want de lord all to herself--’

‘I not interferin’ wid her little games! All her life I let her do jes’
as she like; and she don’t mind ole Jessica! Ah, I know more dan one
secret ob my missy’s--you bet, Jerusha!’

‘I dessay! All gals hab dere secrets, and dere lovers too. Dis lord not
Missy Quita’s first lover, _I_ know.’

‘Why, o’ course not--handsome young lady like dat. But de good looks
not allays de good heart. Missy not grateful, ’pears to me,’ grumbled
Jessica. ‘She not want me any longer now she got Sir Russell to wait on
her.’

‘De good looks not allays de good heart,’ echoed Jerusha; ‘you may
well say _dat_, Aunty Jess. De good looks sometimes cover de debbil’s
heart--like Massa Courcelles’!’

‘Sakes! what you know ’bout _him_, Jerusha?’

‘I don’t know no _good_ of him, Aunty.’

‘Jes’ like all de rest ob de world. I nebber could bear dat oberseer;
he berry bad fellow; and dis morning he ’sulted me dreffully. Jes’
hear, Jerusha. I comin’ from White House, quiet as could be, wid
nothin’ to do, now my missy gone, when I meet dat Courcelles walkin’
along and swearin’ to himself. He came straight up to me and he say,
“Out ob my way, you d--d old hag! If it hadn’t been for your peepin’
and listenin’, I believe I should have had my own way. Wait till I get
you down to de cotton fields agen, and I’ll serve you out for dis.”’

‘Laws, Aunty Jess, and what _you_ say?’

‘_I_ say “You jes’ stop dat, you bad man. I knows all about you; and
you’ll nebber get me down to cotton fields agen, for if you tries it,
I’ll blow de roof ob de Oleander Bungalow off your head, and tell de
ole master eberyting!”’

‘An’ what is der to tell?’ cried Jerusha, with sudden interest.

‘Sakes, gal, more than _you_ guess! But I don’t see why I shouldn’t
tell you, now my missy safe, and goin’ to marry de Governor. ’Sides, my
missy not behave berry grateful to me. ’Tis de way wid de white folk.
Why, Jerusha, dat oberseer Missy Quita’s lover for ober a year, and she
go out night after night to meet him in de bungalow, as I’m a livin’
woman--’

‘She--go--meet--Massa Courcelles?’ gasped Jerusha.

‘Sure! And more, dat baby down at Doctor’s bungalow no more Miss
Lizzie’s child than it is yours. Dat baby ’long to Missy Quita and
Massa Courcelles. _I_ knows! but I never tell till my missy so
ungrateful as to leave me behind, and dat man swear and call me “d--d
hag!” But you nebber tell nobody else, Jerusha! You keep dat secret
like your life, till de wedding’s ober--and then, what matter?’

‘Dat baby is _his_? Oh, de false man!’ cried the coolie, with flashing
eyes, as she sprang to her feet, and held little Henri at arm’s length.
‘And dis chile ob mine, dis white-skinned boy, who you think _he_
’long to, Aunty Jessica? Why, to that villain too! Dat’s his fader!
Your fine Massa Courcelles, what ruin your missy and me same time!’

‘What you say, Jerusha? Your baby’s fader de oberseer?’

‘Sure! Didn’t he favour me ober all de other coolie girls on de
plantation? Didn’t he give me my earrings and bangles and my Sunday
shawl, and tell me I de prettiest girl he ebber see? And I fool enough
to believe him, Aunty; I thinkin’ he lub me allays, and be good to me,
for little Henri’s sake. But when he found I should hab a baby, he
sent me back to de fields, and I work dere till I nearly drop. And he
beat me--yes, Aunty!’ shrieked Jerusha in her rage, as she turned her
flaming eyes up to the skies; ‘he whipped me and my poor baby, and
laughed when I dared him to strike us! And I vowed to hab my revenge
on him, and I will hab it yet. Massa Courcelles shall live to wish he
nebber deceived a poor coolie girl, or struck her baby! That’s so!’

‘And _I’ll_ help you, Jerusha, for I hate dat man, and I swore once to
give him obeah water for deceiving my poor missy. And now he serve you
de same--dat’s twice bad; and I know anudder heart what he’s broken,
though she as good and pure as de white May lilies in de garden--and
dat’s Miss Lizzie.’

‘Nebber _Miss Lizzie_!’ cried Jerusha incredulously. ‘Miss Lizzie do
wicked ting? Why, she’s de best woman I ebber see!’

‘No, no, Jerusha! I not mean dat. Only dis villain make lub to de
poor gal, and promise to marry her, and now she breakin’ her heart
because he so false. Rosa tell me eberyting. She pretend to be asleep
in verandah dis morning, and hear all they say. Miss Lizzie ’clare she
nebber, nebber marry him now.’

‘She miserable woman if she do,’ said Jerusha. ‘But hush, Aunty Jess,
here come Miss Lizzie. Don’t say nuffin ’bout little Henri ’fore her.
She too good and sweet! She not like us! I never dare tell her who was
his fader.’

As the coolie spoke, Lizzie came up to them, pale but smiling. She
carried her basket as usual on her arm, and as soon as she saw little
Henri, she drew a small sponge-cake from a selection of such dainties
which she carried for the sick, and held it out to him.

‘What a beauty he grows, Jerusha! He will soon be out of arms now, and
toddling after you everywhere.’

‘Yes, Missy Liz, he bery fine boy,’ replied the young mother, in a
subdued tone.

‘Is anything the matter?’ said Lizzie, quickly glancing from Jerusha to
the old nurse. ‘No bad news of Miss Maraquita, I hope, Jessica?’

‘Oh, no, Missy Liz. Missy quite well enough, I guess. ’Tis them she
leave behind what feel bad.’

‘You miss her, I daresay, and the White House seems dull without her.
Well, you will soon be gay enough when the wedding takes place.’

‘I s’pose so, Missy Liz. Is dat baby at your bungalow all right,
missy?’ continued Jessica inquisitively.

Lizzie flushed to the roots of her hair. She had encountered some
impertinence on this subject before, and she feared a repetition of it.

‘It is quite well, Jessica, although it is very weakly, and I am not at
all sure of rearing it.’

‘A good ting if it die,’ said the nurse; ‘and if all such babies died,
Missy Liz--we’ve no room for them here.’

‘You shouldn’t say that, Jessica,’ returned Lizzie mildly; ‘for it may
be God’s will that it should live.’

‘Better say good ting if its _fader_ died!’ exclaimed Jerusha. ‘That’s
the sort we’ve no room for. Ah, Missy Liz, no use you opening your eyes
like dat. We know plenty on dis plantation, we do!--and we know de good
from de bad too, and may de Lord help us to root ’em out.’

‘Have you any special enemy here then, Jerusha?’ demanded Lizzie.

‘Yes, I have,’ replied the coolie, with dogged determination. ‘Massa
Courcelles is my special enemy, and I hate him!’

‘Monsieur de Courcelles, Jerusha? Has he been unkind to you, or done
you any wrong?’

‘He has done me _dis_ wrong!’ cried Jerusha, holding out her baby. ‘He
has given me dis chile, and blows on the top of it!’

She would have said more, but Lizzie put her hand to her head, and,
with a low cry, passed swiftly from them. The women gazed after her in
astonishment. They could not understand a nature without any feeling
of revenge in it,--with only the deepest pain for the sins of one it
loved, and a horror of hearing them mentioned by others. They thought
that Lizzie had misunderstood them, or had not heard aright.

‘Dat’s funny!’ exclaimed Jerusha. ‘’Pears I didn’t put things right, or
she would have smacked little Henri on the head, or killed him dead, as
I’d like to kill dat baby at de bungalow.’

‘Missy Liz not one of _our_ sort,’ said Jessica. ‘She allays berry
quiet and gentle, but I guess she _feel_ same as rest.’

‘Does she _know_ about dat baby at de bungalow?’

‘I ’spect she knows eberyting, and dat dese low niggers say it is _her_
chile: same as Massa Courcelles did! Poor Miss Lizzie, she’s too good
for us. She oughter run a knife into him and the chile too.’

‘That’s so,’ cried Jerusha; ‘and dat’s what _I_ will do for her! I full
of revenge, Jessica. I like to get up some night and fire de Oleander
Bungalow, and burn dat man in his bed! I like to stick him wid knife,
same as pig--an’ to make him drink poison water till he die.’

‘Better give him de obeah water--dat safe and silent,’ replied the
nurse; ‘but you must do it secret, Jerusha. You mustn’t tell anybody
but me.’

‘I telling no one; but I watch and wait, and I hab my revenge. I swear
it on my little Henri’s head!’ said Jerusha solemnly.

[Illustration]




[Illustration]

CHAPTER IX.


Meanwhile Maraquita, up on the hill range, was fast recovering her
equanimity. With Lizzie and the Doctor’s bungalow out of sight; with
her mother’s assurance that De Courcelles should be banished from
Beauregard before they returned to it; with recuperated health, and
the prospect of a marriage beyond her most ambitious dreams, life
seemed to stretch out like one long vista of pleasure before her.
Hers was a shallow, frivolous nature, incapable of looking beyond the
present, or of dwelling long upon the past. She was a terrible coward
though, and had she remained on the plantation, and been subjected
to the entreaties and reproaches of her lover, might have thrown up
everything to link her fate with his, and regretted it bitterly for
ever afterwards. The marriage she was about to make with Sir Russell
Johnstone was in reality far better suited to her. So long as he was
attentive to her, and loaded her with presents, she didn’t mind his
being middle-aged and ugly, for she had very little sentiment in her
nature, and no idea of love as it should be betwixt man and woman.
Her notion of a lover was of some one who must be always paying her
compliments, or giving her pretty things, or devising schemes for
her enjoyment, and in these particulars Sir Russell was perfect. He
displayed all the infatuation and imbecility which usually attacks
an elderly man who finds himself in sudden and unexpected possession
of a beautiful girl; and Maraquita could never inhale too much of the
incense of flattery. She bridled, and simpered, and blushed under his
adoring glances, as if she had never been subjected to such an ordeal
before; whilst Mrs Courtney would entreat ‘dear Sir Russell to spare
her little girl such a battery of admiration, or he would frighten
her back into her shell.’ Quita was beginning to give herself also
all the airs and graces of a Governor’s wife, and to hold her head
above even her own mother. The Government Bungalow was charmingly
commodious, and filled with official servants, whom the little lady
ordered about as if they already belonged to her; and in fact she had
already reconciled herself so effectually to her new position, that
she had almost forgotten that which was just past, and which she was
ready to try and believe had never existed. She rode with the Governor,
and walked with him, and smiled at his compliments, and even suffered
him to embrace her, without the least display of repugnance or dislike.
Not that the recollection of Henri de Courcelles had entirely ceased
to trouble her. She thought of him often, but with no warmer feeling
than fear. She would start, every now and then, in the midst of her
occupation, to remember the threat he had made her, and to shiver under
the apprehension that he might fulfil it. She would run at such times
to her mother, and implore her to find out if De Courcelles had really
left their service, and if he had quitted San Diego, or was lingering
round Beauregard. She declared that she never could summon courage to
be married until she knew that there was no fear of her former lover
way-laying her on her way to church, as he had sworn to do, and perhaps
injuring or frightening her into a betrayal of the secret between them.
Mrs Courtney became so anxious at last that her daughter’s mind should
be set at rest, that she asked her husband to join them on the hills
for a few days, thinking it would be safer to confer with him on the
subject by word of mouth, than through a letter. Mr Courtney came up as
soon as his business would permit him, and the first moment his wife
had him to herself, she broached the distasteful subject.

‘What have you done about De Courcelles, Mr Courtney? Have you given
him warning to leave us?’

‘I have, my dear, for I feel very dissatisfied concerning him. I
sent for him as soon as you had left home, as I told you I should,
and informed him that reports had reached me concerning himself and
Maraquita that I could not pass over without comment.’

‘Oh, Mr Courtney! I _begged_ you not to use our dear girl’s name.’

‘Well, I couldn’t tell him a lie, Nita, and I really could invent no
better excuse for sending him away. So I thought honesty would be, as
usual, the best policy.’

‘But what did he say to it?’ demanded Mrs Courtney breathlessly. ‘Did
he deny the fact, or--or--tell any falsehoods about it?’

‘Not that I am aware of. He neither admitted nor denied the truth of
my statement, but I could see from his manner that it had hit home. So
I told him he could stay on the plantation on one condition only, and
that was that he fulfilled his engagement with Lizzie Fellows.’

‘I _wish_ you hadn’t,’ replied his wife, with a look of vexation. ‘I
don’t want him to stay, under any circumstances. Things can never be
the same again between us after the avowal of his impudent pretensions,
and I can’t see how the matter would be improved by his marrying Lizzie
Fellows. In fact, Mr Courtney, I think you should also try and provide
for Lizzie elsewhere, for Quita can hardly notice her when she is Lady
Johnstone, after what she has done.’

‘Nita, I don’t believe she has done anything she need be ashamed of.
I have full faith in Lizzie, as I have told you before, and I will
not insult her by a suspicion of wrong. However, with regard to her
marrying Henri de Courcelles, you may set your mind at rest, for she
has refused him.’

‘Lizzie has _refused_ to marry De Courcelles?’ exclaimed Mrs Courtney,
with amazement.

‘Have I not said so? De Courcelles seemed quite ready to accede to
my proposal, and I gave him a week to settle it in. Before a couple
of days were over our heads, however, he came to tell me that it was
of no use, and Miss Fellows had refused to have anything to do with
him. I told him I couldn’t go back from my word, and that (under
the circumstances) I refused to retain him on the plantation as an
unmarried man, so I would pay him a quarter’s salary, and he must clear
out in a week. But before I did so, I walked down to Lizzie’s bungalow,
and had a very plain conversation with her on the subject.’

Mrs Courtney’s complexion faded to a dull yellow.

‘About the nurse-child? Does she still deny that it is hers?’

‘Emphatically, and with such undeniable sincerity, that I quite believe
her. I would stake my life that she has nothing to do with that child
except to take care of it. She is a most injured woman, in my opinion,
and I urged her, for her own sake as well as ours, to do as her father
(were he living) would command her, and reveal the name of the mother
of the infant.’

‘Oh, Mr Courtney, how _very_ wrong of you to try and make Lizzie break
her oath! Why, it would be _perjury_!’ cried Mrs Courtney, virtuously
indignant, and trembling with anxiety, ‘and I would rather think she
had fallen, than commit such a crime. Surely she was not so weak as to
be persuaded to do such a thing?’

‘No; she is adamant, and her lips are closed like a vice. She refuses
to say anything upon the subject, excepting to reiterate her former
assertion that the child is not hers. And she told me the reason she
had rejected Monsieur de Courcelles’ proposal is because he has said
the same thing of her as other people.’

‘Well, of course. What can she expect?’ said his wife, looking
infinitely relieved. ‘It is very hard on the poor girl, but she is
bound to keep her oath; and people _will_ talk. I have heard the
coolies speaking of it in the most confident manner, as if they had not
the slightest doubt that she is the baby’s mother.’

‘I’d like to hear a coolie talking of her affairs in _my_ presence!’
returned Mr Courtney, clenching his fist. ‘He wouldn’t talk again in
a hurry. If I can’t do anything else for the daughter of my poor dead
friend, I will protect her. But there was something Lizzie said that
somewhat puzzled me, Nita. In speaking of De Courcelles, she used these
terms,--“_He_, who of all others should have died before he accused
me of a crime of which he _knew_ I was guiltless.” She emphasised the
word “_knew_” so deeply that it attracted my attention, and I asked her
_how_ De Courcelles should _know_ of her innocence above other people.
But I could get nothing further out of her. She blushed to her eyes,
poor girl, and was silent; but I was sure she felt she had gone too
far. What can De Courcelles know for certain, Nita? Is it possible he
can have anything to do with this mysterious little stranger at the
bungalow?’

‘Dear me, Mr Courtney, how can _I_ answer the question?’ exclaimed his
wife pettishly. ‘I don’t see anything peculiar in Lizzie’s words. She
meant, doubtless, that being her betrothed husband, he should have had
more faith in her virtue; and so he should. But men judge women by
themselves, and so we seldom come off scot-free. But are you going to
get another overseer? _That_ is the most important thing to me. I can’t
think of that De Courcelles’ presumption with any patience.’

‘Yes, yes, my dear! it is all settled, and he leaves us next week. I
have already engaged his successor--Mr Campbell, who used to manage the
Glendinning estates before old Mr Houston died. He bears an excellent
character, and, I trust, may prove all we require. He is noted for his
kindness to his coolies; and I am afraid De Courcelles has not raised
the character of Beauregard in that respect.’

‘Oh, he is a wretch all round!’ cried Mrs Courtney; ‘and I shall
not breathe freely till he is gone. I hope he will leave the island
altogether.’

‘That I cannot tell you, for I have nothing to do with his movements
after he quits the plantation. I think he is sure to do so, however,
as he is not a favourite in San Diego, and would find it difficult to
get another situation here. But let us talk of something more pleasant,
Nita. How is our Maraquita getting on with the Governor? Is it all
plain sailing?’

‘_Plain sailing?_’ echoed Mrs Courtney. ‘What a term to apply to it.
Why, they positively _adore_ each other, my dear, and are never happy
when apart. Sir Russell is only _too_ charming. He follows Quita about
everywhere, and waits on her like a slave. He has given her the most
exquisite diamond pendant, and an Arab horse that cost him two hundred
pounds. I am longing to see our darling installed as the mistress of
Government House. Sir Russell means to go over to Trinidad for the
honeymoon. The Government steamer will take them on board directly
after the wedding-breakfast; and they will be absent for a month.
The day after they return to Government House, the marriage will be
celebrated by a splendid ball. He is going to issue invitations to
everybody in the island--high and low. Isn’t it noble of Sir Russell?
But he says he would ask the whole world, if he could, to witness his
triumph in the possession of so lovely a bride.’

‘I don’t wonder at his enthusiasm,’ exclaimed the father, ‘for he has
got the loveliest girl in the British possessions! But what about her
fal-lals, my dear? Can they be got ready in time?’

‘Only just enough to go on with, Mr Courtney; but Sir Russell is as
impatient as a boy of twenty, and refuses to wait a day over the
month. I have sent my orders to England, as you desired me; but, of
course, they can’t be here in time. The wedding-dress I can luckily
supply. Perhaps you have forgotten the exquisite dress of Honiton
lace you gave me when the dear child was born. I am having it made up
over white satin; and she could wear nothing, Sir Russell says, more
elegant or appropriate. As the happy event is taking place in the hot
season, Maraquita can wear nothing but white muslin and lace, which I
shall have no trouble in procuring for her; and by the time the rainy
season sets in, her dresses will have arrived from England. Really, Mr
Courtney, it seems as if the fates smiled upon her, for nothing could
be more fortunate than everything has turned out.’

The planter acquiesced in his wife’s opinion, and the few days he spent
on the hills confirmed it as his own. No two people could appear to be
happier than Quita and her _fiancé_. She suffered herself to be loved,
and caressed, and petted to any extent; and Sir Russell was always
ready to gratify her. Her proud father thought she looked lovelier than
ever, under the consciousness of her coming honours, and went back to
Beauregard fully satisfied that she was the most fortunate girl in the
world. But as the time passed on, and the moment drew near when the
mother and daughter must also quit the hills, Quita’s agitation became
very apparent.

‘Mamma,’ she would say, in a horrified whisper, clinging fast to her
mother’s hand, ‘are you quite, _quite_ sure _he_ has left Beauregard?’

‘Quite sure, my dearest. Your father sent him away a fortnight ago, and
Mr Campbell, the new overseer, is living at the Oleander Bungalow in
his stead.’

‘But might he not be hiding somewhere near? At Shanty Hill, or in the
Miners’ Gulch? There are public-houses in both those places.’

‘Quita, my child, you must get over this foolish fear. In the first
place, your father is quite convinced that De Courcelles has left San
Diego, as there is no vacant situation in the island for which he
could apply; and in the second, even if he were in the neighbourhood he
would not dare to speak to you, far less to try and injure you.’

‘Ah, mamma, you don’t know Henri! You should have seen his eyes when
he said he would stab me at the altar. He is terrible when he is in a
rage. And I feel convinced he will keep his word. He will hang about
Beauregard till my wedding-day, and then he will hide in the church
and shoot me, and I shall die in my wedding-dress, bespattered with
blood!’ replied Quita, relapsing into tears at the awful picture she
had conjured up in her imagination.

‘Quita, you will make yourself ill if you go on like this!’ said Mrs
Courtney, with grave solicitude. ‘You are really too silly to be
reasoned with. Do you forget you are going to be the Governor’s wife?
You are not going to marry a nobody, but a man high in position and
power, and no one will dare to assail you either by word or deed. The
church in which you are married will be lined with the military; and
if you are nervous, Sir Russell will have a special guard of honour to
protect you. But don’t let _him_ guess at any of your nervous fears,
for Heaven’s sake, or he may get curious to learn the cause of them.
Rely on me, Quita, that all will be well.’

‘But there is another thing, mamma,’ said the girl, after a pause.
‘I am horribly afraid that old Jessica knows too much. One night
when--when--I had been at the bungalow, I found her awake and watching
for my return. And two or three times she has muttered hints that I
could not misunderstand.’

‘Oh, Quita, Quita, what trouble you have got yourself into. It seems as
if we should never surmount the difficulties in our path. I shall know
no peace until you are Lady Johnstone.’

‘Nor I either, mamma! But can’t we send Jessica away too? I don’t
intend to take her to Government House, and you will have no use for
her when I am gone.’

‘My dear, I am afraid it would be dangerous to dismiss her. She would
guess the reason, and these negroes are very revengeful. They will
serve you to the death, so long as you make them your friends; but
once turn round on them, and their malice knows no bounds. Jessica
has been with you since your birth, and to send her adrift just as
you are going to be married, would be to set her tongue going like a
mill-wheel. No, Quita, you must pursue a more politic course! I think
we made a mistake in not bringing Jessica up to the hills with us. Had
I known what you tell me now, I would not have consented to her being
left behind; but you must take her some presents when we return, and do
all in your power to conciliate her. Don’t encourage any familiarity,
nor appear to understand any hints she may give you, but keep her in a
good temper, my dear child, until after the fourteenth, whatever you
do.’

Acting on her mother’s advice, Maraquita took a gaily-coloured shawl
and a necklace of gilt beads to Jessica when she returned to the White
House, and made the old nurse’s heart repent that she had been led
into repeating any scandal about her missy. But the departure of the
overseer was too important an event to be passed over in silence,
and Maraquita was doomed to hear a repetition of what was thought
concerning it in the coolie quarters.

‘Missy seen de new oberseer?’ Jessica commenced, the first moment they
were left alone. ‘He berry fine man,--broader den Massa Courcelles,
and plenty more colour in face; nice hair too--same colour as de
carrots--and a soft voice, kinder like a woman’s.’

‘No, Jessica, I haven’t seen him yet; but papa has asked him to dine
with us this evening.’

‘Ah, Missy won’t like him same as Massa Courcelles, for sure,--but
Massa Campbell good man for all dat, and Massa Courcelles berry bad
man--all de niggers dance when he go ’way, and Jerusha she throw mud
after him, and frighten his horse so he stand right up on his two legs.’

‘Was he hurt?’ cried Quita suddenly.

However frivolous a woman may be, she cannot quite lose all interest,
at a moment’s notice, in the man she has loved.

‘Oh, no, missy! Massa Courcelles same like part of horse. He nebber
thrown; only, he swear and curse plenty at Jerusha.’

‘Who _is_ Jerusha?’ asked Quita, betrayed by curiosity into forgetting
her studied reticence; ‘and why should she throw dirt at Monsieur de
Courcelles?’

‘Ah, missy not knowing. Jerusha only a poor coolie, but all de niggers
would throw dirt at Massa Courcelles if they dared. But he been berry
bad man to poor Jerusha--same as he been to my missy,’ added Jessica,
in a lower tone.

Maraquita turned deathly white.

‘How has he hurt Jerusha?’ she asked, in spite of herself.

‘He’s left her with a baby, Missy Quita--a nice baby, too, most as
white as himself, with his eyes and hair; but Jerusha feel bad about
it, ’cause he’s treated her berry cruel, and whipt them both with de
cowhide.’

Maraquita turned her head aside, and burst into tears. She would
have given worlds that the old nurse should not have witnessed her
emotion, but she could not restrain it. How true it is that the love
of most women is founded on vanity, and that even if they do not want
a man themselves, they cannot bear that any one else should have him.
Besides, this degrading _liaison_ with a coolie girl had taken place
at the very time that Henri de Courcelles had been swearing eternal
love to herself. Quita did indeed feel at that moment that she had
parted with a woman’s best possession for nothing. She had never been
so terribly humiliated before. Jessica was not slow to take advantage
of her young mistress’s weakness.

‘Don’t cry, missy,’ she said; ‘dat man not worth one tear from my
missy’s bright eyes. He false and cruel, and got bad heart. Missy
forget all about dis trouble when she marry de Governor. And Missy Liz
will keep de secret, nebber fear, and old Jessica too. Nobody tell
nuffin, de Governor nebber know, and den eberyting go right.’

But this allusion roused the instinctive fear in Maraquita’s bosom.
She forgot her mother’s caution, and the folly of resenting the
old nurse’s hints. She forgot everything, except the awful fear of
exposure, and in her alarm she played her worst card, and turned round
upon Jessica like a fury.

‘What do you mean by speaking to me like that?’ she panted. ‘How _dare_
you pretend to think that I cried because I was in trouble for any one
but the poor coolie girl? I know I am a fool to feel such things. Any
one is a fool who wastes a tear on you coloured people, for you are all
false, and mischief-making, and scandalous; but it is too bad that you
should speak as though I were crying for myself. What trouble could I
be in? I have everything I want, and in a few days I shall marry the
Governor, and none of you will dare to say a word against me; and if
you do, Sir Russell will have you whipped, and put in prison, and you
may lie and die there, for aught I care.’

It was a foolish and childish rage in which she indulged, but Quita
was not much raised above the coloured people she professed to scorn,
either in intellect or education. Yet it was sufficient to excite the
desire for revenge in the object of her wrath.

‘Missy have me whipped and put in prison?’ she shrieked; ‘_me_--who
hab nursed her in my bosom, ever since she was a tiny baby? Oh, no,
Missy Quita, you nebber mean dat! I will tell Massa Courtney, and de
Governor, eberyting before dat. I tell dem all I know. I clare de
character of poor Missy Liz, down at de Doctor’s bungalow, and I tell
_whose_ child dat is what she nurse day and night.’

‘Oh, Jessica!’ cried Maraquita, frightened beyond expression, as she
threw herself on her knees before the old negress, ‘don’t say that.
I was beside myself. I didn’t stop to weigh my words. I know you are
good and faithful, and will be true to me, and keep my terrible secret,
for you wouldn’t ruin your poor little missy who loves you; would you,
Jessica?’

But the old negress was not to be so easily conciliated. She looked
very surly, even whilst Maraquita’s white arms were wreathed about her
withered neck.

‘Missy Quita, you berry ungrateful gal,’ she murmured presently. ‘How
many nights I sit up and watch and wait, while you flirting wid dat
overseer, fear your moder or some one come and find you out? Den when
you taken bad, ole Jess know your trouble all de time, and nebber speak
one word. But now you going to be grand rich lady, you want to kick
old Jessica out, and forget all she done for you. But I won’t be kicked
out, Missy Quita. You must take me to Government House, and give me
good wages, or I won’t keep your secret any longer; and it isn’t no
good saying I’m ungrateful, missy, ’cause you were ungrateful first,
and you knows it.’

Maraquita saw the terrible mistake she had made, when it was too late.
Why had she not remembered her mother’s advice to conciliate the old
negress until the marriage was an accomplished fact? _Then_, Mrs
Courtney would have devised some plan to keep her quiet. But now there
was but one course open to her,--to promise to give Jessica everything
she demanded, however unreasonable.

‘Why, of course, Nursey,’ she answered, with assumed playfulness. ‘Did
you think I was going to leave my old darkey behind? What should I do
without you? You shall come to Government House as soon as I am settled
there, and dress me in the mornings, as you have always been used to
do; and perhaps some day you may nurse my little children as you nursed
me. Will that content you, Jessica?’ she added, with trembling lips
that ill-concealed her anxiety.

‘And missy will raise my wages?’ demanded the negress; ‘Governor’s
lady give better wages than planter’s daughter, and I hab worked for
eighteen long years in your service, Missy Quita.’

‘Yes, yes! You shall have any wages you like, Jessica. I shall tell Sir
Russell what a good servant you have been to me, and he will be proud
to reward you. But perhaps you would rather have a pension,’ said Quita
wistfully, ‘or a lump sum of money, that will enable you to go back to
your own country, and live there.’

‘No, missy; I rather live and die with you. You seem like my own child
to me, and San Diego like my country. I no want go way; and if missy
good to me, I keep her secrets always, and no one shall hear ole Jess
tell de truth about her.’

Maraquita felt this was only a compromise, but she had no alternative
but to accept it. There was a hard, stony look in old Jessica’s eyes
that alarmed her, and made her doubt her promises of fidelity. She was
not slow to perceive, either, the mercenary motive of her demand for
higher wages, but she could not afford to comment on it. She had put
herself in the power of another woman--the most terrible bondage the
sex is ever subjected to--and she saw no way to loosen her chains,
except by perfect acquiescence. But she loathed the old negress, even
while she forced herself to caress her. The affection of her whole life
seemed to have faded beneath the ordeal to which it had been subjected.
Jessica was no longer the kind and faithful nurse who had tended her
from her infancy, and to whom she had run in every dilemma, but a hard
and grasping creditor, who had possession of that which might ruin her
life, and demanded her very blood in ransom. However, there seemed no
way but one out of the scrape, and so Maraquita promised to do all and
everything that the negress might require, and tried to soothe her
ruffled feelings with soft words and caresses.

But she did not feel sure that she had succeeded, even though Jessica
paid her some honied compliments in return, and lay down in her bed
that night longing more than ever that the wedding-day had come and
gone.

All went smoothly, however. No one saw or heard anything further of
Henri de Courcelles, nor was Quita even annoyed by the mention of his
name. He seemed to have totally disappeared from Beauregard, and Mr
Courtney fully believed that he had left the island. The old nurse made
no further disagreeable allusions to the past, and appeared to be as
devoted to her young mistress as she had ever been, so that Maraquita
regained her lightness of heart, and turned her attention entirely to
the brilliant prospects before her. The fourteenth was close at hand,
and the preparations for the Governor’s wedding, which was to take
place in the Fort church, were on a scale of magnificence never before
attempted in San Diego. The church was to be embowered in flowers; the
military were to line the road leading to it; half the gentry in the
island were to be engaged in singing a choral service; and a splendid
barouche, drawn by four horses, and preceded by a guard of honour, was
to convey the newly-married couple back to Beauregard.

Here, naturally, all were in a flutter. Mrs Courtney, never a good
housekeeper, was nearly out of her mind over the wedding-breakfast and
the completion of Maraquita’s dress, and was thankful to delegate the
issuing of the invitations to her husband and her daughter. Mr Courtney
made out the list of names, whilst Maraquita wrote the invitations in
a very irregular hand on gold-edged paper. Half-way down the list she
came upon the name of Miss Fellows.

‘_Lizzie?_’ she exclaimed, with rather rashly expressed astonishment.

‘Of course! why not?’ returned her father quickly.

‘Well, because, although _we_ don’t believe the reports about her,
papa, _other_ people do, and some of the ladies of San Diego might
object to meet her.’

Mr Courtney consigned the ladies of San Diego to a warmer region, but
held to his determination.

‘There shall be no festivity held in my house to which Lizzie Fellows
is not invited,’ he answered sternly; ‘and the fact that she is still
welcomed here, will be the best denial of these infamous calumnies
against her. I should be ashamed of you, my daughter, if you consented
to her name being omitted from our guests. The poor girl has suffered
enough from the death of her father, and the rascality of that
scoundrel De Courcelles, to say nothing of these cruel rumours, without
our turning our backs upon her.’

The mention of De Courcelles’ name was enough to stop Maraquita’s
tongue, and she wrote the invitation without further comment. Only,
as both she and her mother anticipated, Lizzie’s reply was in the
negative. She made her recent loss the excuse for not joining in any
gaiety; but Maraquita and Mrs Courtney knew that after the insults they
had hurled at her, she would never place her foot voluntarily again
within the walls of the White House.


END OF VOL. II.


COLSTON AND COMPANY, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


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