‘I shall do no such thing!’ replied the Captain warmly. ‘What is the worth of friendship if it cannot stand by you in the time of need? Confide in me, Lizzie. Tell me your trouble, and let us devise a way out of it together.’
‘We cannot do that,’ replied Lizzie mournfully; ‘but you shall hear it, all the same. If I did not tell you, San Diego would soon do so. All the hands are talking of it by this time. Even that yellow girl in the verandah is ready to believe me to have fallen to a level with herself.’
‘You alarm me!’ exclaimed Hugh Norris. ‘What is it they dare to say of you?’
‘That that child is mine!’
‘What child? I did not know there was a child here.’
‘You are the last to hear of it then,’ replied Lizzie bitterly. ‘The smallest lad on the plantation has discussed it before now. I mean the infant which Rosa has in her arms. It is not mine! I hope you will believe me when I say so. But I have no means of proving the truth of what I say.’
‘You surprise me beyond measure,’ said Captain Norris. ‘In what does the difficulty lie, and why cannot you appeal to the real parents to help you out of it?’
‘Captain Norris, you must not question me too closely, lest I should betray a secret I have sworn to keep. Be satisfied with what I tell you. It was only yesterday my father gave me that child to nurse for him. He asked me to keep it through the night, and in the morning he would get a proper person to take charge of it. You have heard the sequel. By the morning, God had called him away, and I am left with this burden on my hands for ever!’
‘But, Lizzie, forgive me if I do not follow you. What reason is there for your keeping the child? What interest had your father in it? Why should you not send it to the people he intended to entrust it to?’
‘Perhaps I might have done so if this suspicion had not fallen upon me; but now, what would be the use of it? Absent or present, the child will be regarded as mine. I shall have to bear the stigma; I may as well have the satisfaction of knowing I have fulfilled my dead father’s wishes.’