“‘Be patient, Bella,’ he would reply. ‘In a little while, in only a few years, those that scorn to sit at our table now, or sleep between our sheets, will be proud of an invitation—those of them who will not be dead. You remember how Stevens passed out last year—free-living and easy, everybody’s friend but his own. The Kohala crowd had to bury him, for he left nothing but debts. Watch the others going the same pace. There’s your brother Hal. He can’t keep it up and live five years, and he’s breaking his uncles’ hearts. And there’s Prince Lilolilo. Dashes by me with half a hundred mounted, able-bodied, roystering _kanakas_ in his train who would be better at hard work and looking after their future, for he will never be king of Hawaii. He will not live to be king of Hawaii.’ “George was right. Brother Hal died. So did Prince Lilolilo. But George was not _all_ right. He, who neither drank nor smoked, who never wasted the weight of his arms in an embrace, nor the touch of his lips a second longer than the most perfunctory of kisses, who was invariably up before cockcrow and asleep ere the kerosene lamp had a tenth emptied itself, and who never thought to die, was dead even more quickly than Brother Hal and Prince Lilolilo. “‘Be patient, Bella,’ Uncle Robert would say to me. ‘George Castner is a coming man. I have chosen well for you. Your hardships now are the hardships on the way to the promised land. Not always will the Hawaiians rule in Hawaii. Just as they let their wealth slip out of their hands, so will their rule slip out of their hands. Political power and the land always go together. There will be great changes, revolutions no one knows how many nor of what sort, save that in the end the _haole_ will possess the land and the rule. And in that day you may well be first lady of Hawaii, just as surely as George Castner will be ruler of Hawaii. It is written in the books. It is ever so where the _haole_ conflicts with the easier races. I, your Uncle Robert, who am half-Hawaiian and half-_haole_, know whereof I speak. Be patient, Bella, be patient.’