“Don’t speak to me of her mother. She was not a woman, she was a fiend, a fitting match for Henry Brandt! To my mind she was a revolting creature. A fat, flabby half-caste, who hardly ever moved out of her chair but sat eating all day long, until the power to move had almost left her! I can see her now, with her sensual mouth, her greedy eyes, her low forehead and half-formed brain, and her lust for blood. It was said that the only thing which made her laugh, was to watch the dying agonies of the poor creatures her brutal protector slaughtered. But she thirsted for blood, she loved the sight and smell of it, she would taste it on the tip of her finger when it came in her way. Her servants had some story amongst themselves to account for this lust. They declared that when her slave mother was pregnant with her, she was bitten by a Vampire bat, which are formidable creatures in the West Indies, and are said to fan their victims to sleep with their enormous wings, whilst they suck their blood. Anyway the slave woman did not survive her delivery, and her fellows prophecied that the child would grow up to be a murderess. Which doubtless she was in heart, if not in deed!” “What an awful description! And what became of her?” “She was killed at the same time as Brandt, indeed the natives would have killed her in preference to him, had they been obliged to choose, for they attributed all the atrocities that went on in the laboratory to her influence. They said she was ‘Obeah’ which means diabolical witchcraft in their language. And doubtless their unfortunate child would have been slaughtered also, had not the overseer of the plantation carried her off to his cabin, and afterwards, when the disturbance was quelled, to the Convent, where, you say, she has been educated.” “But terrible as all this is, dear Doctor, it is not the poor girl’s fault. Why should we give up her acquaintance for that?” “My dear Margaret, are you so ignorant as not to see that a child born under such conditions cannot turn out well? The bastard of a man like Henry Brandt, cruel, dastardly, Godless, and a woman like her terrible mother, a sensual, self-loving, crafty and bloodthirsty half-caste--what do you expect their daughter to become? She may seem harmless enough at present, so does the tiger cub as it suckles its dam, but that which is bred in her will come out sooner or later, and curse those with whom she may be associated. I beg and pray of you, Margaret, not to let that girl come near you, or your child, any more. There is a curse upon her, and it will affect all within her influence!”