thunderstruck, I got up and made her a low bow.

The ladies of Jacobus's household evidently spent their days in
light attire. This stumpy old woman with a face like a large

wrinkled lemon, beady eyes, and a shock of iron-grey hair, was
dressed in a garment of some ash-coloured, silky, light stuff. It

fell from her thick neck down to her toes with the simplicity of an
unadorned nightgown. It made her appear truly cylindrical. She

exclaimed: "How did you get here?"
Before I could say a word she vanished and presently I heard a

confusion of shrill protestations in a distant part of the house.
Obviously no one could tell her how I got there. In a moment, with

great outcries from two negro women following her, she waddled back
to the doorway, infuriated.

"What do you want here?"
I turned to the girl. She was sitting straight up now, her hands

posed on the arms of the chair. I appealed to her.
"Surely, Miss Alice, you will not let them drive me out into the

street?"
Her magnificent black eyes, narrowed, long in shape, swept over me

with an indefinable expression, then in a harsh, contemptuous voice
she let fall in French a sort of explanation:

"C'EST PAPA."
I made another low bow to the old woman.

She turned her back on me in order to drive away her black
henchwomen, then surveying my person in a peculiar manner with one

small eye nearly closed and her face all drawn up on that side as
if with a twinge of toothache, she stepped out on the verandah, sat

down in a rocking-chair some distance away, and took up her
knitting from a little table. Before she started at it she plunged

one of the needles into the mop of her grey hair and stirred it
vigorously.

Her elementary nightgown-sort of frock clung to her ancient,
stumpy, and floating form. She wore white cotton stockings and

flat brown velvet slippers. Her feet and ankles were obtrusively
visible on the foot-rest. She began to rock herself slightly,

while she knitted. I had resumed my seat and kept quiet, for I
mistrusted that old woman. What if she ordered me to depart? She

seemed capable of any outrage. She had snorted once or twice; she
was knittingviolently. Suddenly she piped at the young girl in

French a question which I translate colloquially:
"What's your father up to, now?"

The young creature shrugged her shoulders so comprehensively that
her whole body swayed within the loose wrapper; and in that

unexpectedly harsh voice which yet had a seductive quality to the
senses, like certain kinds of natural rough wines one drinks with

pleasure:
"It's some captain. Leave me alone - will you!"

The chair rocked quicker, the old, thin voice was like a whistle.
"You and your father make a pair. He would stick at nothing -

that's well known. But I didn't expect this."
I thought it high time to air some of my own French. I remarked

modestly, but firmly, that this was business. I had some matters
to talk over with Mr. Jacobus.

At once she piped out a derisive "Poor innocent!" Then, with a
change of tone: "The shop's for business. Why don't you go to the

shop to talk with him?"
The furious speed of her fingers and knitting-needles made one

dizzy; and with squeaky indignation:
"Sitting here staring at that girl - is that what you call

business?"
"No," I said suavely. "I call this pleasure - an unexpected

pleasure. And unless Miss Alice objects - "
I half turned to her. She flung at me an angry and contemptuous

"Don't care!" and leaning her elbow on her knees took her chin in
her hand - a Jacobus chin undoubtedly. And those heavy eyelids,

this black irritated stare reminded me of Jacobus, too - the
wealthy merchant, the respected one. The design of her eyebrows

also was the same, rigid and ill-omened. Yes! I traced in her a
resemblance to both of them. It came to me as a sort of surprising

remote inference that both these Jacobuses were rather handsome men
after all. I said:

"Oh! Then I shall stare at you till you smile."
She favoured me again with an even more viciously scornful "Don't

care!"
The old woman broke in blunt and shrill:

"Hear his impudence! And you too! Don't care! Go at least and
put some more clothes on. Sitting there like this before this

sailor riff-raff."
The sun was about to leave the Pearl of the Ocean for other seas,

for other lands. The walled garden full of shadows blazed with
colour as if the flowers were giving up the light absorbed during

the day. The amazing old woman became very explicit. She
suggested to the girl a corset and a petticoat with a cynical

unreserve which humiliated me. Was I of no more account than a
wooden dummy? The girl snapped out: "Shan't!"

It was not the naughtyretort of a vulgar child; it had a note of
desperation. Clearly my intrusion had somehow upset the balance of

their established relations. The old woman knitted with furious
accuracy, her eyes fastened down on her work.

"Oh, you are the true child of your father! And THAT talks of
entering a convent! Letting herself be stared at by a fellow."

"Leave off."
"Shameless thing!"

"Old sorceress," the girl uttered distinctly, preserving her
meditative pose, chin in hand, and a far-away stare over the

garden.
It was like the quarrel of the kettle and the pot. The old woman

flew out of the chair, banged down her work, and with a great play
of thick limb perfectlyvisible in that weird, clinging garment of

hers, strode at the girl - who never stirred. I was experiencing a
sort of trepidation when, as if awed by that unconscious attitude,

the aged relative of Jacobus turned short upon me.
She was, I perceived, armed with a knitting-needle; and as she

raised her hand her intention seemed to be to throw it at me like a
dart. But she only used it to scratch her head with, examining me

the while at close range, one eye nearly shut and her face
distorted by a whimsical, one-sided grimace.

"My dear man," she asked abruptly, "do you expect any good to come
of this?"

"I do hope so indeed, Miss Jacobus." I tried to speak in the easy
tone of an afternoon caller. "You see, I am here after some bags."

"Bags! Look at that now! Didn't I hear you holding forth to that
graceless wretch?"

"You would like to see me in my grave," uttered the motionless girl
hoarsely.

"Grave! What about me? Buried alive before I am dead for the sake
of a thing blessed with such a pretty father!" she cried; and

turning to me: "You're one of these men he does business with.
Well - why don't you leave us in peace, my good fellow?"

It was said in a tone - this "leave us in peace!" There was a sort
of ruffianly familiarity, a superiority, a scorn in it. I was to

hear it more than once, for you would show an imperfect knowledge
of human nature if you thought that this was my last visit to that

house - where no respectable person had put foot for ever so many
years. No, you would be very much mistaken if you imagined that

this reception had scared me away. First of all I was not going to
run before a grotesque and ruffianly old woman.

And then you mustn't forget these necessary bags. That first
evening Jacobus made me stay to dinner; after, however, telling me

loyally that he didn't know whether he could do anything at all for
me. He had been thinking it over. It was too difficult, he