om the French trader
there. With him came two visitors--a big half-caste of middle age, and
his wife, a girl of twenty or there-about. This was Edward Pallou and
his wife Taloi.

* * * * *

I was in the house when Tom returned, enjoying a long-denied smoke.
Pallou and his wife entered and greeted me. The man was a fine,
well-set-up fellow, wiry and muscular, with deep-set eyes, and bearing
across his right cheek a heavy scar. His wife was a sweet, dainty
little creature with red lips, dazzling teeth, hazel eyes, and long
wavy hair. The first thing I noticed about her was, that instead of
squatting on a mat in native fashion, she sank into a wide chair, and
lying back enquired, with a pleasant smile and in perfect English,
whether I was feeling any better. She was very fair, even for a
Paumotuan half-caste, as I thought she must be, and I said to Pallou,
"Why, any one would take your wife to be an Englishwoman!"

"Not I," said Taloi, with a rippling laugh, as she commenced to make a
banana-leaf cigarette; "I am a full-blooded South Sea Islander. I
belong to Apatiki, and was born there. Perhaps I have white blood in
me. Who knows?--only my wise mother. But when I was twelve years old I
was adopted by a gentleman in Papeite, and he sent me to Sydney to
school. Do you know Sydney? Well, I was three years with the Misses
F----, in ---- Street. My goodness! I WAS glad to leave--and so were
the Misses F---- to see me go. They said I was downright wicked,
because one day I tore the dress off a girl who said my skin was
tallowy, like my name. When I came back to Tahiti my guardian took me
to Raiatea, where he had a business, and said I must marry him, the
beast!"

"Oh, shut up, Taoi!" growled the deep-voiced Pallou, who sat beside me.
"What the deuce does this man care about your doings?"

"Shut up yourself, you brute! Can't I talk to any one I like, you
turtle-headed fool? Am I not a good wife to you, you great, over-grown
savage? Won't you let a poor devil of a woman talk a little? Look here,
Tom, do you see that flash jacket he's wearing? Well, I sat up two
nights making that--for him to come over here with, and show off before
the Rotoava girls. Go and die, you ----!"

The big half-caste looked at Tom and then at me. His lips twitched with
suppressed passion, and a dangerous gleam shone a moment in his dark
eyes.

"Here, I say, Taloi," broke in Tom, good-humouredly, "just go easy a
bit with Ted. As for him a-lookin