was the first time that she had loved. Yes, loved, for though she would
as soon have sacrificed her life as to have acknowledged it, yet she did
love him, and the poor untutored Quadroon girl read the fact that the
mother could not, with all her cultivation and knowledge of the world,
detect. But jealousy is an apt teacher, and the spirit of Maud Leonardo
was now thoroughly aroused; she sighed for revenge, and puzzled her
brain how she might gain the longed-for end.

Captain Ratlin had eyes for only one object, and that was the young and
beautiful English girl. He never gave a thought to Maud; he had never
done so for one moment. As a friend of her father, or rather as a dealer
intimately connected in a business point of view with him, he had given
a present to his daughter, and had endeavored to make himself agreeable
to her at all times, but never for one moment with a serious thought of
any degree of intimacy, save of the most public and ordinary character.
Probably Maud herself would have never thought seriously about the
matter had she not felt how much the English girl surpassed her in
beauty, in accomplishment, and in all that might attract the interest of
one like Captain Ratlin.

Jealousy is a subtle poison, and the Quadroon was feeding upon it
greedily, while its baleful effect was daily becoming more and more
manifest in her behaviour.

CHAPTER IX.

THE ATTACK.

DON LEONARDO was no favorite among the tribes and chiefs of the region
which was his immediate neighborhood, and he lived within the walls of
his well-arranged residence, more like one in a fort than in his own
domestic dwelling, maintaining himself, in fact, by a regular armament
of his servants and a few countrymen whom he retained in his service.
With the negroes he was, therefore, no friend, save so far as he
purchased their prisoners of them, whom they secured in their marauding
inroads upon the interior tribes. They feared Don Leonardo because he
was a bold, bad man, and cared not for the spilling of blood at any
time, for the furtherance of his immediate gain in the trade he pursued.
It was for his interest to make them fear him, and this he contrived to
do most effectually.

As Don Leonardo always paid for the slaves he purchased of the coast
tribes in hard Spanish dollars, they believed him to possess an
inexhaustible supply of specie, and the idea of robbing him had more
than once been broached among them in their counsels; b