had not the nice sense of honor, that true delicacy of spirit,
which should have led him to remember they were his guests from
necessity, and that to push a suit under such circumstances was not only
indelicate but positively insulting. And yet he did so; true, he did not
actually importune Miss Huntington, but his attentions and services were
all rendered under that guise and aspect which rendered them to her most
repulsive.

Captain Bramble took good care that his prisoner and rival should have
no degree of intercourse with her whom he knew very well Captain Ratlin
loved. Under pretence that he feared his prisoner would attempt to
escape, he kept him under close guard, and did not permit him once upon
deck during the entire trip from the factory of Don Leonardo to the
harbor of Sierra Leone. This chafed the young commander's spirit
somewhat, but yet he was of too true a spirit to sink under oppression;
he was brave and cheerful always. Of course, Miss Huntington saw and
understood all this, and the more heartily despised the English officer
for the part he played in the unmanly business.

Maud kept by herself. She felt miserable, and as is often the case,
realized that the success of her treachery, thus far, which, in her
anticipation, had promised so much, had but still more deeply shadowed
her heart. The English officer looked upon her with mingled feelings of
admiration for her strange beauty, with contempt for her treachery, and
with a thought that she might be made perhaps the subject of his
pleasure by a little management by-and-by. It was natural for a heart so
vile as his to couple every circumstance and connection in some such
selfish spirit with himself; it was like him.

"Maud," he said to her, one day.

"Well," she answered, lifting her handsome face from her hands, where
she often hid it.

"You have lost one lover?"

The girl only answered by a flashing glance of contempt.

"How would you like another?"

"Who?" she said, sternly.

"Me!" answered Captain Bramble.

"You!" she said, contemptuously, and with so much expression as to end
the conversation.

No, he had not rightly understood the Quadroon; it was not wounded
pride, that sentiment so easily healed when once bruised in the heart of
a woman; it was not that which moved the laughter of the Spanish
slaver--it was either love, or something very like it, turned to actual
hate, and the native power of her bosom for revenge seemed to be now