"Do you mean to betray me?"
"No!"
"Why, then, tell me all this?"
"Because I would ask the reward of thirteen years' silence."
"And that reward—?"
"Is easy for you to grant. I am tired of dependence, even on your goodness. Make me your wife, and let me share the wealth acquired by the guilt of whose secrets I know."
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE DUEL IN THE MOONLIGHT.
The plantation of Silas Craig, at Iberville, was situated, as we have already said, upon the borders of a wood; a luxuriant forest, stretching for miles upon the banks of the Mississippi, varied every here and there by undulating dells and pools of water, lying hidden beneath the shadows of giant trees, whose branches had waved for centuries above a solitude, broken only by the fleet foot of the Indian.
It was in this forest that the unhappy and martyred quadroon Francilia lay in her quiet grave—a grassy mound, marked only by the rude wooden cross erected at its head by the faithful mulatto, Toby.