“Look about you, boy,” continued Célandine, “and mark the wild, mysterious retreat I have made myself, on your account alone. No other white man has ever entered the Obi-woman’s hut. Not a negro in the island but shakes with fear when he approaches that low doorway; not one but leaves a gift behind when he departs. And now, chance has done for the Obi-woman that which all her perseverance and all her cunning has failed to effect. Influence I have always had amongst the blacks, for I am of their kindred, and they believe that I possess supernatural powers. You need not smile, boy. I can sometimes foretell the future so far as it affects others, though blindly ignorant where it regards myself; just as a man reads his neighbour’s face clearly, though he cannot see his own. All my influence I have devoted to the one great object of making money. For that, I left my sunny home to live years in the bleak, cold plains of France; for that, I sold myself in my old age to one whom I could not care for, even in my youth; for that I have been tampering of late with the most desperate and dangerous characters in the island; and money I only valued because, without it, I feared I could never find my boy. Listen, my darling, and learn how a mother’s love outlives the fancy of youth, the devotion of womanhood, and the covetousness of old age. Look at me now, child. It is not so long since men have told me—even in France, where they profess to understand such matters—that I retained my attractions still. You may believe that thirty years ago the Quadroon of Cash-a-crou, as they called her, had suitors, lovers, and admirers by the score. Somehow, I laughed at them all. It seemed to me that a man’s affection for a girl only lasted while she despised him, and I resolved that no weakness of my own should ever bring me down a single step from the vantage-ground I held. Planters, overseers, councillors, judges, all were at my feet; not a white man in the island but would have given three months’ pay for a smile from the yellow girl at Cash-a-crou; and the yellow girl—slave though she was—carried her head high above them all.