He still muttered and mumbled to himself--though it seemed to her he was meditating something all through the end of his paroxysm--and at last he said: "When is he coming back? I suppose you know." "How should I know, and why should he come back? Your welcome has not been very warm, and, as you say, he may have gone to the other island where the treasure has been removed to." Again at this, to him, awful suggestion, it seemed as if his brutal fury was going to break out once more, but this time, by an effort that was no doubt terrific, he calmed himself and was contented to exclaim: "I don't believe that! If he came to fetch it away, why didn't he do so before now? There was no one to interfere with him. You may depend it's all a lie--the treasure's here in my island, and he hasn't dug it up because he couldn't. He was afraid of you before I came back." "My admirer--and afraid of me! Well!" exclaimed Barbara, with a different note of scorn in her voice now. "Or he was playing at being your admirer to throw dust in your eyes and get away with it all somehow." Here Barbara shrugged her shoulders; but even that significant gesture was allowed to pass also without an explosion. He was calming himself, taming himself, she saw plainly, and she guessed at once that he had a reason for what he did. What was that reason? She resolved to know. "I suppose I must yield," he said, with a strange look in his eyes. "Barbara, we must give in. You go and see him and tell him I'll go halves. Though it's a cruel shame, a wicked shame." "Is it? I don't think so. He came all the way from England to get it all for himself, and it was only when he found that there were descendants of Simon on the island that he resolved to give it--to share it!" she corrected herself. "Well, we must do it. But to think of his taking half away! When will he come back?" "I tell you I don't know." Her brother again plunged into meditation. Then he said: "You go down to the mouth of the river and watch till he comes in. You can talk to him better than I can--you're what they call a lady, I suppose. At any rate, you're edycated. Then tell him what I say--that I'll give in and go shares--that is, if you can't wheedle him into taking less. You're a fine-looking girl, Barbara, as good a looking girl as ever I've seen in Jamaica or Darien, or even up to New York; if you played your cards right we could get the lot out of him." The girl shrank away from him with such a look of disgust--for the odious leer upon his face told her quite as plainly as his words did, if not more so, what he meant--that he refrained from continuing. Whatever plot he was maturing--and he was maturing a deep-laid one--he saw that this was not the way to work it. Therefore he continued his instructions.