ions. Their colours were primal, their
crinolines and bonnets enormous--the latter perched far back; their
plumes, if cheaper, were even longer; where flowers and ribbons took
the place of feathers heads looked like window boxes; their sleeves
were so tight that they could not hold their prayer books at the
correct angle, and more than one had stumbled over her train as she
dropped her skirts and tripped into the church. They were still
further bedecked with a profusion of false jewellery, cotton lace and
fringe, ribbons streaming from every curve and angle, and shoes as
gaudy as the flowers on their bonnets. Their men, in imitation of the
aristocrats, wore, of the best quality they could muster, smart
coats, flowered waistcoats, ruffled neck-cloths, tight white trousers,
and pointed boots a size too small. They were the tradespeople of the
village; in some cases the servants of the estates, although by far
the greater number of the young women of humbler Nevis had received a
smattering of education and were now too good to work. Their parents
might get a living as best they could, huckstering or on the
plantations, while the improved offspring, content to herd in one room
on the scantiest fare, dreamed of gala days and a scrap of new finery.
Nevertheless, many of them were handsomer than the white fragile
looking aristocrats, with their olive or cream coloured skins, liquid
black eyes, and superb undulating figures.

Warner had more than once written of the tragedy of these people, his
poet's imagination tracing the descent of the finer specimens from
ancient kings whose dust was mixed with the sands of the desert; and
his had been one of the most impassioned voices lifted in the cause of
emancipation. For these reasons he was much beloved by the coloured
folk of Nevis of all ranks, and some one of them had never failed
to come forward, when he lay ill and neglected, or the bailiffs
threatened to sell his house over his head. All obligations were
faithfully discharged, for he received handsome sums from his
publishers, but his patrimony was long since squandered; nothing
remained to him but his home and a bit of land high on the mountain,
which he had clung to because he loved its wild beauty and solitude.

Lady Mary Denbigh, with her languishing airs, her "Book of Beauty"
style, bored him more than anyone in Bath House, and he had begun to
suspect that her attentions were due not more to vanity than to a
desire to f