itself from all connected with it, but
now it burst into hideous activity and pictured interminable years of
scorching heat and blinding glare. For a moment she descended to the
verge of hysteria, from which she struggled with so mighty an effort
that it vitalized her spirit for the ordeal of her new life; and when
Hamilton, cursing himself, came to assist her to land, she was able to
remark that she recalled the beauty of Christianstadt, and to
anathematize her sea-green maids.

The trail of Spain is over all the islands, and on St. Croix has left
its picturesque mark in the heavy arcades which front the houses in the
towns. Behind these arcades one can pass from street to street with
brief egress into the awful downpour of the sun, and they give to both
towns an effect of architectural beauty. At that time palms and
cocoanuts grew in profusion along the streets of Frederikstadt and in
the gardens, tempering the glare of the sun on the coral.

Peter Lytton's coach awaited the Hamiltons, and at six o'clock they
started for their new home. The long driveway across the Island was set
with royal palms, beyond which rolled vast fields of cane. St. Croix was
approaching the height of her prosperity, and almost every inch of her
fertile acres was under cultivation. They rolled up and over every hill,
the heavy stone houses, with their negro hamlets and mills, rising like
half-submerged islands, unless they crowned a height. The roads swarmed
with Africans, who bowed profoundly to the strangers in the fine coach,
grinning an amiable welcome. Surrounded by so generous a suggestion of
hospitality and plenty, with the sun low in the west, the spirits of the
travellers rose, and Rachael thought with more composure upon the
morrow's encounter with her elder sisters. She knew them very slightly,
their husbands less. When her connection with Hamilton began,
correspondence between them had ceased; but like others they had
accepted the relation, and for the last three years Hamilton had been a
welcome guest at their houses when business took him to St. Croix. Mrs.
Lytton had been the first to whom he had confided his impending failure,
and she, remembering her mother's last letter and profoundly pitying the
young sister who seemed marked for misfortune, had persuaded her husband
to offer Hamilton the management of his grazing estates on the eastern
end of the Island. She wrote to Rachael, assuring her of welcome, and
reminding her tha