“It’s true, but they deserved it, you know, the little wretches, always thieving or lying or something! I’ve seen a woman whipped to death, because she wouldn’t work. We think nothing of that sort of thing, over there. Still--you can’t wonder that I was glad to get out of the Island. But I loved old Pete, and if he had been alive when I left, I would have brought him to England with me. He used to carry me for miles through the jungle on his back,--out in the fresh mornings and the cool, dewy eves. I had a pony to ride, but I never went anywhere, without his hand upon my bridle rein. He was always so afraid lest I should come to any harm. I don’t think anybody else cared. Pete was the only creature who ever loved me, and when I think of Jamaica, I remember my old nigger servant as the one friend I had there!” “It is very, very sad!” was all that Mrs. Pullen could say. She had become fainter and fainter, as the girl leaned against her with her head upon her breast. Some sensation which she could not define, nor account for--some feeling which she had never experienced before--had come over her and made her head reel. She felt as if something or someone, were drawing all her life away. She tried to disengage herself from the girl’s clasp, but Harriet Brandt seemed to come after her, like a coiling snake, till she could stand it no longer, and faintly exclaiming: “Miss Brandt! let go of me, please! I feel ill!” she rose and tried to make her way between the crowded tables, towards the open air. As she stumbled along, she came against (to her great relief) her friend, Elinor Leyton. “O! Elinor!” she gasped, “I don’t know what is the matter with me! I feel so strange, so light-headed! Do take me home!” Miss Leyton dragged her through the audience, and made her sit down on a bench, facing the sea. “Why! what’s the matter?” demanded Harriet Brandt, who had made her way after them, “is Mrs. Pullen ill?” “So it appears,” replied Miss Leyton, coldly, “but how it happened, you should know better than myself! I suppose it is very warm in there!” “No! no! I do not think so,” said Margaret, with a bewildered air, “we had chairs close to the side. And Miss Brandt was telling me of her life in Jamaica, when such an extraordinary sensation came over me! I can’t describe it! it was just as if I had been scooped hollow!” At this description, Harriet Brandt burst into a loud laugh, but Elinor frowned her down. “It may seem a laughing matter to you, Miss Brandt,” she said, in the same cold tone, “but it is none to me. Mrs. Pullen is far from strong, and her health is not to be trifled with. However, I shall not let her out of my sight again.” “Don’t make a fuss about it, Elinor,” pleaded her friend, “it was my own fault, if anyone’s. I think there must be a thunderstorm in the air, I have felt so oppressed all the evening. Or is the smell from the dunes worse than usual? Perhaps I ate something at dinner that disagreed with me!”