‘An’ how do you like Trinidad, Mrs Hawtorn?’ Miss Euphemia asked with a society simper; while Edward began engaging in conversation with the two men. ‘You find de excessiveness of de temperature prejudicial to salubrity, after de delicious equability of de English climate?’ ‘Well,’ Marian assented smiling, ‘I certainly do find it very hot.’ ‘Oh, exceedingly,’ Miss Euphemia replied, as she mopped her forehead violently with a highly scented lace-edged cambric pocket-handkerchief. ‘De heat is most oppressive, most unendurable. I could wring out me handkerchief, I assure you, Mrs Hawtorn, wit de extraordinary profusion of me perspiration.’ ‘But this is summer, you must remember,’ Dr Whitaker put in nervously, endeavouring in vain to distract attention for the moment from Miss Euphemia’s conversational peculiarities. ‘In winter, you know, we shall have quite delightful English weather on the hills—quite delightful English weather.’ ‘Ah, yes,’ the father went on with a broad smile. ‘In winter, Mrs Hawtorn, ma’am, you will be glad to drink a glass of rum-and-milk sometimes, I tell you, to warm de blood on dese chilly hilltops.’ The talk went on for a while about such ordinary casual topics; and then at last Miss Euphemia happened to remark confidentially to Marian, that that very day her cousin, Mr Septimius Whitaker, had been married at eleven o’clock down at the cathedral. ‘Indeed,’ Marian said, with some polite show of interest. ‘And did you go to the wedding, Miss Whitaker?’ Miss Euphemia drew herself up with great dignity. She was a good-looking, buxom, round-faced, very negro-featured girl, about as dark in complexion as her brother the doctor, but much more decidedly thick-lipped and flat-nosed. ‘O no,’ she said, with every sign of offended prejudice. ‘We didn’t at all approve of de match me cousin Septimius was unhappily makin’. De lady, I regret to say, was a Sambo.’ ‘A what?’ Marian inquired curiously. ‘A Sambo, a Sambo gal,’ Miss Euphemia replied in a shrill crescendo. ‘Oh, indeed,’ Marian assented in a tone which clearly showed she hadn’t the faintest idea of Miss Euphemia’s meaning. ‘A Sambo,’ Mr Whitaker the elder said, smiling, and coming to her rescue—‘a Sambo, Mrs Hawtorn, is one of de inferior degrees in de classified scale and hierarchy of colour. De offspring of an African and a white man is a mulatto—dat, madam, is my complexion. De offspring of a mulatto and a white man is a quadroon—dat is de grade immediately superior. But de offspring of a mulatto and a negress is a Sambo—dat is de class just beneat us. De cause of complaint alleged by de family against our nephew Septimius is dis—dat bein’ himself a mulatto—de very fust remove from de pure-blooded white man—he has chosen to ally himself in marriage wit a Sambo gal—de second and inferior remove in de same progression. De family feels dat in dis course Septimius has toroughly and irremediably disgraced himself.’