ever touched her mind or her senses, though many have sought her.
Wherever she goes men try to win her, but she has no thought for
any. Her mind goes back to you. Just when you entered the garden I
learned--and only then-that you were here. She hid it from me, but
Darius Boland knew, and he had seen your man, Michael Clones, and she
had then made him tell me. I was incensed. I was her mother, and yet
she had hid the thing from me. I thought she came to this island for the
sake of Salem, and I found that she came not for Salem, but for you....
Ah, Mr. Calhoun, she deserves what you did to save her, but you should
not have done it."

"She deserves all that any better man might do. Why don't you marry her
to some great man in your Republic? It would settle my trouble for me
and free her mind from anxiety. Mrs. Llyn, we are not children, you and
I. You know life, and so do I, and--"

She interrupted him. "Be sure of this, Mr. Calhoun, she knows life even
better than either of us. She is, and has always been, a girl of sense
and judgment. When she was a child she was my master, even in Ireland.
Yet she was obedient and faithful, and kept her head in all vexed
things. She will have her way, and she will have it as she wants it,
and in no other manner. She is one of the world's great women. She is
unique. Child as she is, she still understands all that men do, and does
it. Under her hands the estates in Virginia have developed even more
than under the hands of my brother. She controls like another Elizabeth.
She has made those estates run like a spool of thread, and she will do
the same here with Salem. Be sure of that."

"Why does she not marry? Is there no man she can bear? She could have
the highest, that's sure." He spoke with passion and insistence. If she
were married his trouble would be over. The worst would have come to
him--like death. His eyes were only two dark fires in a face that was
as near to tragic pain crystallized as any the world has seen. Yet there
was in it some big commanding thing, that gave it a ghastly handsomeness
almost; that bathed his look in dignity and power, albeit a reckless
power, a thing that would not be stayed by any blandishments. He had the
look of a lost angel, one who fell with Belial in the first days of sin.

"There is no man she can bear--except here in Jamaica. It is no use.
Your governor, Lord Mallow, whom she knew in Ireland, who is distant
kin of mine, he has already made a