undiverted, the burden of a disease whose torments she now could fully appreciate, to die alone in that great house with only his slaves to tend him?  It had seemed to her when she left him that human nature could stand no more, and that she was justified; but she was an old woman now and knew that all things can be endured.  When that picture of his desolate last years and lonely death had remorselessly shaped itself in her imagination, and she realized that it would hang there until her hands were folded, she suffered one more hour of agony and abasement, then caught at the stoicism of her nature, accepted her new dole, and returned to her daughter.

VI

Rachael’s mind struggled past its eclipse, but her recovery was very slow.  Even after she recognized her mother and Dr. Hamilton, she sat for months staring at Nevis, neither opening a book nor looking round upon the life about her.  But she was only eighteen, and her body grew strong and vital again.  Gradually it forced its energies into her brain, released her spirit from its apathy, buried memory under the fresher impressions of time.  A year from the day of her return, if there were deep and subtle changes in her face and carriage, which added ten years to her appearance, she was more beautiful to experienced eyes than when she had flowered for the humming-birds.  She took up her studies where she had dropped them, a little of her old buoyancy revived; and if her girlishness was buried with ideals and ambitions, her intellect was clear and strong and her character more finely balanced.  She flew into no more rages, boxed her attendants’ ears at rarer intervals, and the deliberation which had seemed an anomaly in her character before, became a dominant trait, and rarely was conquered by impulse.  When it worked alone her mother laid down her weapons, edged as they still were, and when impulse flew to its back, Mary Fawcett took refuge in oblivion.  But she made no complaint, for she and her daughter were more united than when the young girl had seemed more fit to be her grandchild.

The Governor of St. Christopher had written a letter to his friend, the Governor of St. Croix, which had caused that estimable functionary to forbid Levine the door of Government House.  Levine could not endure social ostracism.  He left St. Croix immediately, and took his son Peter with him.  To this child Rachael never referred, and her mother doubted if she remembered anything associated with its impending birth.  Perhaps she believed it dead.  At all events, she made no sign.  Except that she was called Mistress Levine, there was nothing in her outer life to remind her that for two years the markers in her favourite books had not been shifted.  She had studied music and painting with the best masters in Copenhagen, and in the chests which were forwarded by her sisters from St. Croix, there were many new books.  She refused to return to society, and