everybody whose good opinion is worth having mad?" answered the
governor. "I have sent my inspectors to Trelawney. I have had reports
from them. I have used every care--what would you have me do?"

"Used every care? Why don't you ensure the Maroons peaceableness by
advancing on them? Why don't you take them prisoners? They are enraged
that two of their herdsmen should be whipped by a negro-slave under the
order of one of your captains. They are angry and disturbed and have
ambushed the roads to Trelawney, so I'm told."

"Did Mr. Calhoun tell you that when he was here?"

"It was not that which Mr. Calhoun told me the only time he came here.
But who Erris Boyne was. I never knew till, in his honour, he told me,
coming here for that purpose. I never knew who my father was till he
told me. My mother had kept it from me all my life."

The governor looked alert. "And you have not seen him since that day?"

"I have seen him, but I have not spoken to him. It was in the distance
only."

"I understand your manager, Mr. Boland, sees him."

"My manager does not share my private interests--or troubles. He is free
to go where he will, to speak to whom he chooses. He visits Enniskillen,
I suppose--it is a well-managed plantation on Jamaican lines, and its
owner is a man of mark."

Sheila spoke without agitation of any kind; her face was firm and calm,
her manner composed, her voice even. As she talked, she seemed to be
probing the centre of a flower which she had caught from a basket at
the window, and her whole personality was alight and vivifying, her good
temper and spirit complete. As he looked at her, he had an overmastering
desire to make her his own--his wife. She was worth hundreds of
thousands of pounds; she had beauty, ability and authority. She was
the acme of charm and good bearing. With her he could climb high on
the ladder of life. He might be a really great figure in the British
world-if she gave her will to help him, to hold up his hands. It had
never occurred to him that Dyck Calhoun could be a rival, till he had
heard of Dyck's visit to Sheila and her mother, till he had heard
Sheila praise him at the first dinner he had given to the two ladies on
Christmas Day.

On that day it was clear Sheila did not know who her father was; but
stranger things had happened than that she should take up with, and
even marry, a man imprisoned for killing another, even one who had been
condemned as a mutineer, and had won fr