He had only time to wring her hand, when she darted from the house. He watched her figure running swiftly towards the negroes’ quarters, and then returned to the shaded apartment, with a deep sigh. What interest had he then in the packet of letters she had left him to peruse? Lizzie was gone. He should not see her again, perhaps for months, and the world seemed to be a blank without her. In the hope of her speedy return, he sat down for a few minutes more, and mechanically drew the letters towards him. But as his eye fell upon the written words his countenance changed, and his expression became one of the deepest interest. He hastily scanned through the letters, making sundry notes as he did so, and then, with a long low whistle, he tied the envelopes together again, and, laying them upon Lizzie’s desk, walked to the window to watch for some token of her return. None came. The Indian sun was blazing in all its splendour on the tropical leaves and flowers, the pathway to the coolies’ huts was one long line of white dust glittering like golden sand; but not a sound could be heard but the far-off hum of the workers in the cotton fields, not a living creature to be seen but Rosa in the shaded verandah, with Maraquita’s child slumbering on her knees, and an aged negro, long past work, who was warming his stiffened limbs in the sunshine. Hugh Norris watched impatiently for a few minutes from the open door, and then, with a rapid glance at his watch, and a deep sigh, he unwillingly prepared to leave the bungalow.
‘Be a good girl to your mistress, Rosa,’ he said, as he passed the yellow girl; ‘take great care of her and the baby, and I’ll bring you a beautiful string of beads when I come back from England.’
‘Tank you, sar,’ replied Rosa. ‘I’ll be berry good all time you away; and I’d like a nice shawl too, sar.’
‘Well, you’re not bashful, Rosa,’ replied Hugh Norris, laughing; ‘but you shall have the shawl too, if you’ll keep your promise. And if there should be any trouble on the plantation—you know what I mean—take Missy Lizzie up to the White House at once, and don’t mind what she says about staying here.’
‘I understand, sar; but nebber you fear. De niggers on dis plantation too good for dat. They lub Massa and Missus Courtney; and as for Missy Liz, they die for her—dat’s jes’ so.’
Captain Norris gave a sigh of relief.
‘I hope so, Rosa, and it makes me happier to hear you say it; but still I am not easy. But take this and buy yourself a new gown; and remember, when you wear it, that you have promised me to be faithful.’
He thrust a five-dollar note into her hand as he spoke, and with one yearning look in the direction of the negro quarters, walked rapidly away towards the town. Rosa rolled her eyes with delight at the feel of the five-dollar note.
‘He gone ’coon too,’ she thought, with a sapient air; ‘dar’s another what Missy Liz have done for. And she’s so quiet all de time. Dat’s what beats me. ’Pears as if she didn’t care if they was “gone” or not. Wall, if dey all gib me five-dollar notes, I wish there was a thousand of them.’
Meanwhile, Lizzie was kneeling down beside Mammy Chloe’s straw mattress, putting the poor little black baby into hot baths, and watching by it as tenderly as if it had been a princess of the blood royal, until the attack of convulsions had ceased, and it was sleeping peacefully on its mother’s breast again.