for you I have no reproach. You have
given me love for love, and duty for duty. Life has treated you
brutally; what has come now was, I suppose, inevitable. Human nature
when it is strong enough is stronger than moral law. I grieve for you,
but I die without grievance against you. Remember that. And Hamilton? He
is honourable, and he loves you utterly--but is he strong? I wish I
knew. His emotions and his active brain give him so much apparent
force--but underneath? I wish I knew."

Rachael was grateful for her mother's unselfish assurance, but she was
not to be consoled. The passions in her nature, released from other
thrall, manifested themselves in a grief so profound, and at times so
violent, that only her strong frame saved her from illness. For two
weeks after Mary Fawcett's death she refused to see James Hamilton; but
by that time he felt at liberty to assert his rights, and her finely
poised mind recovered its balance under his solace and argument. Her
life was his, and to punish him assuaged nothing of her sorrow. He had
decided, after consultation with his cousin, to take her to Nevis, not
only to seclude her from the scandalized society she knew best, but that
he might better divert her mind, in new scenes, from her heavy
affliction. Hamilton had already embarked in his business enterprise,
but he had bought and manned a sail-boat, which would carry him to and
from St. Kitts daily. In the dead calms of summer there was little
business doing.

"I attempted no sophistry with my cousin," said Hamilton, "and for that
reason I think I have put the final corking-pin into our friendship.
Right or wrong we are going to live together for the rest of our lives,
because I will have no other woman, and you will have no other man; and
we will live together publicly, not only because neither of us has the
patience for scheming and deceit, but because passion is not our only
motive for union. There is gallantry on every side of us, and doubtless
we alone shall be made to suffer; for the world loves to be fooled, it
hates the crudeness of truth. But we have each other, and nothing else
matters."

And to Rachael nothing else mattered, for her mother was dead, and she
loved Hamilton with an increasing passion that was long in culminating.

XIII

They sailed over to Nevis, accompanied by a dozen slaves, and took
possession of Rachael's house in Main Street. It stood at the very end
of the town, beyond the point where th