‘What good should I effect by that, Lizzie? Mr Courtney would only banish me at once from Beauregard. Do you suppose he would give up the prospect of Maraquita becoming the Governor’s wife, for the sake of an overseer? Besides, he already suspects that I admire her, and has told me as much, with the adjoinder that the only condition on which I can retain my situation is to fulfil my engagement with you, and settle down at the Oleander Bungalow as a married man. In that case, he has promised to refurnish the house, and raise my salary. So, you see, we should be very comfortable; and, if you wished it, you could retain your medical appointment over the plantation.’ ‘And so _I_ am to be made the scapegoat to bear your sins into the wilderness, and to patch up your injured character at Beauregard! You have mistaken me altogether. I am capable, I think, of making great sacrifices for a man who loves me, but not for one who rightly belongs to another woman. You will not retain your position at Beauregard through _my_ means.’ ‘Then I am ruined,’ returned the overseer fiercely, ‘and I owe my downfall to you two women! You have destroyed my life between you. I shall be turned off the plantation, without a prospect of employment. And if I become desperate, it will be laid at your door.’ ‘At Maraquita’s, if you please, monsieur, but not at mine. I would have clung to you through good and evil report, had you been true to me. But I cannot forget the cruel infamy you put upon me, knowing it to be false. It is a crime past a woman’s forgiveness,--a calumny that will cling to me through life, even though you married me in church to-morrow. Yet I would rather go down to the grave enduring it, than become your wife.’ ‘It is finished then!’ exclaimed De Courcelles, seizing his hat and rushing from the apartment, ‘and I will trouble you no more on the subject, now or ever,’--and the next moment he was striding hurriedly towards his home. Lizzie trembled as he left her, but she did not weep. Her stock of tears was exhausted. And had they not been, a cry from the infant in the next room would have dried them at their fount. She summoned Rosa, who was basking asleep in the verandah, to its assistance, and with a deep, deep sigh for her dead past, lifted her basket, and took her way to the coolie quarters. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER VIII.