Meanwhile Maraquita, up on the hill range, was fast recovering her equanimity. With Lizzie and the Doctor’s bungalow out of sight; with her mother’s assurance that De Courcelles should be banished from Beauregard before they returned to it; with recuperated health, and the prospect of a marriage beyond her most ambitious dreams, life seemed to stretch out like one long vista of pleasure before her. Hers was a shallow, frivolous nature, incapable of looking beyond the present, or of dwelling long upon the past. She was a terrible coward though, and had she remained on the plantation, and been subjected to the entreaties and reproaches of her lover, might have thrown up everything to link her fate with his, and regretted it bitterly for ever afterwards. The marriage she was about to make with Sir Russell Johnstone was in reality far better suited to her. So long as he was attentive to her, and loaded her with presents, she didn’t mind his being middle-aged and ugly, for she had very little sentiment in her nature, and no idea of love as it should be betwixt man and woman. Her notion of a lover was of some one who must be always paying her compliments, or giving her pretty things, or devising schemes for her enjoyment, and in these particulars Sir Russell was perfect. He displayed all the infatuation and imbecility which usually attacks an elderly man who finds himself in sudden and unexpected possession of a beautiful girl; and Maraquita could never inhale too much of the incense of flattery. She bridled, and simpered, and blushed under his adoring glances, as if she had never been subjected to such an ordeal before; whilst Mrs Courtney would entreat ‘dear Sir Russell to spare her little girl such a battery of admiration, or he would frighten her back into her shell.’ Quita was beginning to give herself also all the airs and graces of a Governor’s wife, and to hold her head above even her own mother. The Government Bungalow was charmingly commodious, and filled with official servants, whom the little lady ordered about as if they already belonged to her; and in fact she had already reconciled herself so effectually to her new position, that she had almost forgotten that which was just past, and which she was ready to try and believe had never existed. She rode with the Governor, and walked with him, and smiled at his compliments, and even suffered him to embrace her, without the least display of repugnance or dislike. Not that the recollection of Henri de Courcelles had entirely ceased to trouble her. She thought of him often, but with no warmer feeling than fear. She would start, every now and then, in the midst of her occupation, to remember the threat he had made her, and to shiver under the apprehension that he might fulfil it. She would run at such times to her mother, and implore her to find out if De Courcelles had really left their service, and if he had quitted San Diego, or was lingering round Beauregard.