like any lady, for so it seemed in their inexperience.

'She would do very well for my place of business in Havana,' said
the Senora Mendizabal, once more studying me through her glasses;
'and I should take a pleasure,' she pursued, more directly
addressing myself, 'in bringing you acquainted with a whip.' And
she smiled at me with a savoury lust of cruelty upon her face.

At this, I found expression. Calling by name upon the servants, I
bade them turn this woman from the house, fetch her to the boat,
and set her back upon the mainland. But with one voice, they
protested that they durst not obey, coming close about me, pleading
and beseeching me to be more wise; and, when I insisted, rising
higher in passion and speaking of this foul intruder in the terms
she had deserved, they fell back from me as from one who had
blasphemed. A superstitious reverence plainly encircled the
stranger; I could read it in their changed demeanour, and in the
paleness that prevailed upon the natural colour of their faces; and
their fear perhaps reacted on myself. I looked again at Madam
Mendizabal. She stood perfectly composed, watching my face through
her glasses with a smile of scorn; and at the sight of her assured
superiority to all my threats, a cry broke from my lips, a cry of
rage, fear, and despair, and I fled from the verandah and the
house.

I ran I knew not where, but it was towards the beach. As I went,
my head whirled; so strange, so sudden, were these events and
insults. Who was she? what, in Heaven's name, the power she
wielded over my obedient negroes? Why had she addressed me as a
slave? why spoken of my father's sale? To all these tumultuary