“Don’t you remember your parents then?” she asked her presently. “Hardly! I saw so little of them,” said Miss Brandt, “my father was a
great doctor and scientist, I believe, and I am not quite sure if he
knew that he had a daughter!”

“O! my dear, what nonsense!”

“But it is true, Mrs. Pullen! He was always shut up in his laboratory,
and I was not allowed to go near that part of the house. I suppose he
was very clever and all that--but he was too much engaged in making
experiments to take any notice of me, and I am sure I never wanted to
see him!”

“How very sad! But you had your mother to turn to for consolation and
company, whilst she lived, surely?”

“O! my mother!” echoed Harriet, carelessly. “Yes! my mother! Well! I don’t think I knew much more of her either. The ladies in Jamaica
get very lazy, you know, and keep a good deal to their own rooms. The
person there I loved best of all, was old Pete, the overseer!”

“The overseer!”

“Of the estate and niggers, you know! We had plenty of niggers on the
coffee plantation, regular African fellows, with woolly heads and
blubber lips, and yellow whites to their eyes. When I was a little
thing of four years old, Pete used to let me whip the little niggers
for a treat, when they had done anything wrong. It used to make me
laugh to see them wriggle their legs under the whip and cry!”

“O! don’t, Miss Brandt!” exclaimed Margaret Pullen, in a voice of pain. “It’s true, but they deserved it, you know, the little wretches, always
thieving or lying or something! I’ve seen a woman whipped to death,
because she wouldn’t work. We think nothing of that sort of thing,
over there. Still--you can’t wonder that I was glad to get out of the
Island. But I loved old Pete, and if he had been alive when I left,
I would have brought him to England with me. He used to carry me for
miles through the jungle on his back,--out in the fresh mornings and
the cool, dewy eves. I had a pony to ride, but I never went anywhere,
without his hand upon my bridle rein. He was always so afraid lest I
should come to any harm. I don’t think anybody else cared. Pete was
the only creature who ever loved me, and when I think of Jamaica, I
remember my old nigger servant as the one friend I had there!”

“It is very, very sad!” was all that Mrs. Pullen could say. She had become fainter and fainter, as the girl leaned against her
with her head upon her breast. Some sensation which she could not
define, nor account for--some feeling which she had never experienced
before--had come over her and made her head reel. She felt as if
something or someone, were drawing all her life away. She tried to
disengage herself from the girl’s clasp, but Harriet Brandt seemed
to come after her, like a coiling snake, till she could stand it no
longer, and faintly exclaiming:

“Miss Brandt! let go of me, please! I feel ill!” she rose and tried
to make her way between the crowded tables, towards the open air. As
she stumbled along, she came against (to her great relief) her friend,
Elinor Leyton. “O! Elinor!” she gasped, “I don’t know what is the matter with me! I
feel so strange, so light-headed! Do take me home!”

Miss Leyton dragged her through the audience, and made her sit down on
a bench, facing the sea. “Why! what’s the matter?” demanded Harriet Brandt, who had made her way
after them, “is Mrs. Pullen ill?”

“So it appears,” replied Miss Leyton, coldly, “but how it happened, you
should know better than myself! I suppose it is very warm in there!”

“No! no! I do not think so,” said Margaret, with a bewildered air, “we
had chairs close to the side. And Miss Brandt was telling me of her
life in Jamaica, when such an extraordinary sensation came over me! I
can’t describe it! it was just as if I had been scooped hollow!”

At this description, Harriet Brandt burst into a loud laugh, but Elinor
frowned her down. “It may seem a laughing matter to you, Miss Brandt,” she said, in the
same cold tone, “but it is none to me. Mrs. Pullen is far from strong,
and her health is not to be trifled with. However, I shall not let her
out of my sight again.”

“Don’t make a fuss about it, Elinor,” pleaded her friend, “it was my
own fault, if anyone’s. I think there must be a thunderstorm in the
air, I have felt so oppressed all the evening. Or is the smell from
the dunes worse than usual? Perhaps I ate something at dinner that
disagreed with me!”

“I cannot understand it at all,” replied Miss Leyton, “you are not
used to fainting, or being suddenly attacked in any way. However, if
you feel able to walk, let us go back to the Hotel. Miss Brandt will
doubtless find someone to finish the evening with!”

Harriet was just about to reply that she knew no one but themselves,
and to offer to take Mrs. Pullen’s arm on the other side, when Elinor
Leyton cut her short. “No! thank you, Miss Brandt! Mrs. Pullen would, I am sure, prefer to
return to the Hotel alone with me! You can easily join the Vieuxtemps
or any other of the visitors to the Lion d’Or. There is not much
ceremony observed amongst the English at these foreign places. It would
be better perhaps if there were a little more! Come, Margaret, take
my arm, and we will walk as slowly as you like! But I shall not be
comfortable until I see you safe in your own room!”

So the two ladies moved off together, leaving Harriet Brandt standing
disconsolately on the Digue, watching their departure. Mrs. Pullen had
uttered a faint Good-night to her, but had made no suggestion that
she should walk back with them, and it seemed to the girl as if they
both, in some measure, blamed her for the illness of her companion. What had she done, she asked herself, as she reviewed what had passed
between them, that could in any way account for Mrs. Pullen’s illness? She liked her so much--so very much--she had so hoped she was going to
be her friend--she would have done anything and given anything sooner
than put her to inconvenience in any way. As the two ladies moved
slowly out of sight, Harriet turned sadly and walked the other way. She
felt lonely and disappointed. She knew no one to speak to, and there
was a cold empty feeling in her breast, as though, in losing her hold
on Margaret Pullen, she had lost something on which she had depended. Something of her feeling must have communicated itself to Margaret
Pullen, for after a minute or two she stopped and said,

“I don’t half like leaving Miss Brandt by herself, Elinor! She is very
young to be wandering about a town by night and alone!”

“Nonsense!” returned Miss Leyton, shortly, “a young lady who can make
the voyage from Jamaica to Heyst on her own account, knocking about in
London for a week on the way, is surely competent to walk back to the
Hotel without your assistance.