“You were thinking, and I suppose still are, that I—your daughter, the child of an old nigger-dealer as you are—would have no chance with this aristocratic stranger who has arrived—this Mr Montagu Smythje. That’s your thought, Jacob Jessuron?”
“Well, Shoodith, dear! you know he ish to be the guesht of the Cushtos; and the Cushtos, ash I hash reason to know, hash an eye on him for his own daughter. Miss Vochan is thought a great belle, and it would be no ushe for ush to ashpire—”
“She a belle!” exclaimed the Jewess, with a proud toss of her head, and a slight upturning of her beautiful spiral nostril; “she was not the belle of the last ball at the Bay—not she, indeed; and as for aspiring, the daughter of a slave-dealer is at least equal to the daughter of a slave—maybe a slave herself—”
“Hush, Shoodith! not a word about that—not a whisper in the hearing of thish young man. You know he ish her cousin. Hush!”
“I don’t care if he was her brother,” rejoined the Jewess, still speaking in a tone of spiteful indignation—for Kate Vaughan’s beauty was Judith Jessuron’s especial fiend; “and if he were her brother,” continued she, “I’d treat him worse than I intend to do. Fortunately for him, he’s only her cousin; and as he has quarrelled with them all, I suppose—has he said anything of her?”
The interrogatory was put as if suggested by some sudden thought—and the questioner seemed to wait with considerable anxiety for the answer.
“Of hish cousin Kate, you mean?”
“Why, who should I mean!” demanded Judith, bluntly. “There is no other she in Mount Welcome the young fellow is likely to be talking about; nor you either—unless, indeed, you’ve still got that copper-coloured wench in your head. Of course, it’s Kate Vaughan I mean. What says he of her? He must have seen her—short as his visit seems to have been; and, if so, you must have talked about her last night—since you sat late enough to have discussed the whole scandal of the island.”
With all this freedom of verbiage, the Jewess seemed not to lose sight of the original interrogatory; and her frequent repetition of it was rather intended to conceal the interest with which she looked for the answer. If her words did not betray that interest, her looks certainly did: for, as she bent forward to listen, a skilled observer might have detected in her eyes that sort of solicitude which springs from a heart where the love-passion is just beginning to develop itself—budding, but not yet blooming.
“True, Shoodith, true,” admitted the slave-merchant, thus bantered by his own bold offspring. “The young man did shpeak of hish cousin; for I hash a wish to know what wash hish opinion of her, and ashked him. I wash in hopes he had quarrelled with her too; but, ach! no—he hashn’t—he hashn’t.”