The Conqueror: Being the True and Romantic Story of Alexander Hamilton

begun to use its summer fuel; but the trades blew softly, and there was much shade on the road above the sea. There was one long stretch, however,

ther side were cane-fields, their tender greens sharp against the deep hard blue of the sea on the left, rising to cocoanut groves and the dark heights of the mountains above the road. Far away, close to the sea, was Brimstone Hill, that huge isolated

lerable sense of his isolation. Rachael recalled how she had stared at it in childish resentment, wondering if a mainland really lay beyond, if Europe were

ow the waist revolving with a pivotal motion which suggests an anatomy peculiar to the tropics. They had a dash of red about them somewhere, and their turbans were white. Rachael's imagination never gave her St. Kitts without its slave wo

brero and waved it. She recognized Dr. Hamilton and shook her whip at him. He and his

kinsman," said the doctor, "but a great one, for he brings me ne

said Rachael. "Come home with me to a g

respects to Mistress Fawcett, and rode on whistling. The two he had recklessly left to thei

d in white linen. His face was burnt to the hue of brick-dust by the first quick assault of the tropic sun, but it was a thin face, well shaped, in spite of prominent c

l; he should have arrived in state with Dr. Hamilton at the hour of five. Perhaps it was to postpone the moment of explanation that she permitted her horse to walk, even afte

merchant. I have so many kinsmen in this part of the world, and they've all succeeded so well, I thought they'd be able to advise me how best to turn over the few guineas I have. My cousin, the do

ed the huskiness of the wet North, had, somewhere in its depths, a peculiar metallic quality which startled Rachael every ti

lls. The bells hung in the throats of nothing more picturesque than grasshoppers, serpents, lizards, and frogs so small as to be almost invisible, but they rang with a harmony that the inherited practice of centuries had given them. And beyond was the monotonous accompaniment of the sea on the rocks. Hamilton lived to be an old

ff her hat at once, and even after it grew dark in their arbour, Hamilton fancied he could see the gleam of her hair. Her eyes were startled and brilliant, and her nostrils quivered uneasily, but she defined none of the sensations that possessed her but the overwhelming recrudescence of her youth. It had seemed to her that it flamed from its ashes before Dr. Hamilton finished his formal words of introduction, and all its forgotten hopes and impulses, timidity and vagueness, surged through her brain during those hours beside the stranger, submerging the memory of Levine. Indeed, she felt even younger than before maturity so suddenly had been thrust upon her; for in those old days she had been almost as severely intellectual as yesterday, and when she had dreamed of the future, it had been with the soberness of an overtaxed brain. But to-day even the world seemed you

ion, new as it was, started at once down the avenue. Rachael heard the familiar tapping of her mother's sti

erious self as her daughter presented the stranger and remarked that he was a co

octor will doubtless bri

e to you. Say good ev

She was one of the most

the kinsman of her bes

e him out of St.

her mother. She was cold and frightened, and L

cett sent a slave after Hamilton's horse, then went to her room and wrote a note to Dr. Hamilton, as

a draught is undesirable but conduct the slightest sound. Rachael's room adjoined her mother's. She knew that the older woman was as uneasily awake as herself, though from vastly different manifestations of the same

looks like a flayed Carib, and I have met some of the handsomest men in Europe and not given them a thought. Yet this man kept me beside him for four hours, and has me awake a whole night because he is not with me. Has the discipline of these last years, then, gone for nothing? Am I but an excitable West Indian after all, and shall I have corded hands before I am twe

n bed, her white hair hanging out of her nightcap. It seemed to her that the end

it sooner-then I should not have been fascinated by this brilliant Scot. It was my mind that flew eagerly to companionship-that was all. The hours were pleasant. I would not regret them but for the deep uneasiness they have caused you. To-day I shall enter the world again. There are many clever and accomplished you

m that held the candle was tense, and her hair fell about her splendid form like a cloud of light.

abroad," she replied. "Better st

m? A fevered imagination will make a god of a Tom Noddy. If I se

ing you have taught me to respect. Whatever the result, I will be to the end what I always have been, the best friend you have. You are very strong. You have had an awful experience, and it has made a woman of thirty of you. You are no silly little fool, rushing blindly

ok upon the love of man with favour? Not unless I wer

upon to go through that wretched experience, whose consequences never finish, and I with so little time left in which to stand by and protect you-" She changed abruptly. "Promise me that you will do nothing unconsidered, that you will not behave like the ordinary Francesca-for whom I have always had the most unmitigate

our creoles a handsome race, and have not all but a few been educated in England? Y

much; do not forget that. I almost am tempted to wish that you had a lighter nature-that you would flirt with love and brush it away, while the world was

come so wedded to it that I would yield it for no man? Besides, do I not live to make you happy, to reward as best I can your unselfish devotion? If ever I could love any man more