Upon her Dido exercised a powerful, and it must be confessed, malignant influence. She had fed the quick brain of the girl with weird tales of African witchcraft and fanciful notions of terrestrial and sidereal influences. Isabella's nature was warped by this domestic necromancy, and had she continued to dwell in the West Indies, she might almost have become a witch herself. Certainly Dido did her best to make her one, and taught her nursling spells and incantations, to which the girl would listen fearfully, half-believing, half-doubting. But her residence in England, her contact with practical English folk, with the sunny side of life, saved her from falling into the terrible abyss of African superstition; and how terrible it is only the initiated can declare. It only needed that she should be removed from the bad influence of the barbaric Sybil to render her nature healthy and fill her life with pleasure. But Dido was like a upas tree, and the moral atmosphere with which she surrounded Isabella was slowly but surely making the girl morbid and unnatural. Mrs. Dallas, versed in the negro character, half-guessed this, but she was too indolent to have Dido removed. Moreover, strange as it may appear, she was more than a trifle afraid of the negress and her unholy arts. Maurice had met with and had fallen in love with Isabella, and she returned his affection with all the ardor of her passionate nature. His handsome and frank face, his sunny nature and optimistic ideas appealed strongly to the girl who had been environed from her earliest infancy by the pessimism of Dido. Maurice saw well how Isabella had deteriorated under the bad influence of the negress, and he did his best to counteract her insidious morality and morbid teachings. He laughed at Isabella's stories and superstitions, and succeeded in making her ashamed of her weakness in placing faith in such degraded rubbish. While with him Isabella was a bright and laughing girl; quite another sort of being to the grave and nervous creature she was while in the presence of Dido. She felt that if she married Maurice his bright strong nature would save her from a lamentable and melancholy existence; and as all her affections and instincts inclined to the young man, she hoped to become his wife. Dido saw her thoughts, and hating Maurice as one who scoffed at Obi, she did her best to put evil ideas in the girl's head concerning the young man. But as yet she had failed to sow dissension between the lovers. On the day after the major's dinner party, Isabella was sitting in the veranda with a book open on her lap and Dido standing gravely near her. Mrs. Dallas, in the cool depths of the drawing-room, was indulging in an after-luncheon siesta. The sunlight poured itself over the velvet lawns, drew forth the perfumes from the flower-beds, and made the earth languorous with heat.