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 the food upon which she sustained life itself. Taking her lonely place in the cabin, after the conversation just referred to, she again hid her face in her hands, and remained with her head bowed in her lap for a long, long while, half dreaming, half waking. Poor, untutored, uncivilized child of nature! she was very, very unhappy now.