“Well, one bright morning, a week before crop-time, a fine large ship, twice the size of that brigantine in the harbour, came and dropped her anchor off the town. The same night her sailors gave a dance at one of the negro-houses in Port Welcome. I never hear a banjo in the still, calm evenings but it thrills to my very marrow still, though it will be five-and-twenty long years, when the canes are cut, since I went into that dancing-room a haughty, wilful beauty, and came out a humble, love-stricken maid. Turn a bit more to the light, my boy, that I may look into your blue eyes; they shine like his, when he came across the floor and asked me to dance. I’ve heard the Frenchwoman say that it takes a long time for a man to win his way into a girl’s heart. Theirs is a cold country, and they have no African blood in their veins. All I know is, that your father had not spoken half-a-dozen words ere I felt for him as I never felt for any creature on earth before. I’d have jumped off the Sulphur Mountain, and never thought twice about it, if he had asked me. When we walked home together in the moonlight—for he begged hard to see me safe to my own door, and you may think I wasn’t very difficult to persuade—I told him honestly that I had never loved any man but him, and never would love another, come what might. He looked down into my eyes for a moment astonished, just as you look now, and then he smiled—no face ever I saw had such a smile as your father’s—and wound his great strong arm round my waist, and pressed me to his heart. I was happy then. If I might live over just one minute of my life again, it should be that first minute when I felt I belonged no more to myself, but to him. “So we were married by an old Spanish priest in the little white chapel between the lighthouse and the town—yes, married right enough, my boy, never doubt it, though I was but a slave. “I do not know how a great lady like our Marquise feels who can give herself and all her possessions, proudly and in public, to the man she loves, but she ought to be very happy. I was very happy, though I might only meet your father by stealth, and with the fear of a punishment I shuddered to think of before my eyes. I thought of it very often, too, yet not without pride and pleasure, to risk it all for his sake. What I dreaded far worse than punishment—worse than death, was the day his ship would sail, and though she lay weeks and months refitting in the harbour, that day arrived too soon. Never tell me people die of grief, my boy, since I came off the hill alive when I had seen the last of those white sails. I could have cursed the ship for taking him away, and yet I blessed her for his sake.