lked away
in the midst of the speech; and then her mother could not but wonder how
she would conduct herself, whenever the day should come that must come,
when (as there was no one on the Breda estate whom Genifrede liked, or
would associate with) Monsieur Bayou should bring some one to their
cottage, and desire Genifrede to marry him. When Margot looked upon her
sons, and upon Aimee, now so inseparable from Isaac, and considered that
their remaining together depended not only on Monsieur Bayou's will, but
on his life, she trembled lest the day should be at hand when Placide
might be carried away northward, and Isaac eastward, and poor Aimee left
desolate. Such had been the mother's passing cares in the situation in
which nothing had been wanting to her immediate comfort. Now, amidst
the perplexities of her new settlement, she was apt to forget that she
had formerly had any cares.

Where to house the party had been the first difficulty. But for old
Dessalines, who, being no soldier, had chosen to hide himself in the
same retreat with them, they would hardly have had good shelter before
the rains. Paul had received them kindly; but Paul's kindness was of a
somewhat indolent sort; and it was doubtful whether he would have
proceeded beyond looking round his hut, and lamenting that it was no
bigger, if his spirited son Moyse, a fine lad of sixteen, had not been
there to do something more effectual, in finding the place and the
materials for the old tiler to begin his work. It was Moyse who
convinced the whole party from the plain that a hut of bamboo and
palm-leaves would fall in an hour before one of the hail-storms of this
rocky coast; and that it would not do to build on the sands, lest some
high tide should wash them all away in the night. It was Moyse who led
his cousins to the part of the beach where portions of wrecks were most
likely to be found, and who lent the strongest hand to remove such beams
and planks as Dessalines wanted for his work. A house large enough to
hold the family was soon covered in. It looked well, perched on a
platform of rock, and seeming to nestle in a recess of the huge
precipices which rose behind it. It looked well, as Dessalines could
obtain neither of his favourite paints to smear it with. It stood,
neither red nor blue, but nearly the colour of the rocks, against which
it leaned, and thatched with palm-leaves, which projected so far as to
throw off the rains, even to a depth