Mrs. Dallas, who leased it because of its suggestion of tropical habitation. She came from the West Indies, and had lived in "The Wigwam," as the house was called, for over ten years.

Mrs. Dallas was a large, fat and eminently lazy woman, who passed most of her time in knitting or sleeping or eating. Her husband had died before she had come to England, and it was the desire to preserve her daughter's health which had brought her so far from the sun-baked islands which her soul loved.

Her languid Creole nature and lethargic habits were unsuited to brisk, practical England, and she hated the gray skies, the frequent absence of sunlight and the lack of rich and sensuous coloring. Often she threatened to return to Barbadoes, but she was too lazy to make the effort of again settling herself in life. With all her longings for the fairy islands of the West, it seemed as though she would end her days in gray and misty England. But she was out of place in this northern land, and so was Dido.

This latter was a tall and massively framed negro woman, with very little of the traditional merry nature of the black about her. She looked rather like a priestess, with her stern face and stately mien; and, indeed, in the West Indies, it was known among the negroes that Dido was high in power among the votaries of Obi. She could charm, she could slay by means of vegetable poisons, and she could--as the negroes firmly believed--cause a human being to dwindle, peak and pine, by means of incantations.

This black Canidia had left a terrible reputation behind her in Barbadoes; and though in skeptical England her powers were unknown, and if they had been made manifest, would have been flouted at, yet her looks, the tragic tones of her voice, inspired the white servants of Mrs. Dallas with distrust. Dido was not a favorite in the servants' part of The Wigwam, but for this unpopularity she cared little, being devoted to Isabella Dallas. She adored her nursling.

The girl was about twenty years of age, tall and straight, with dark hair and darker eyes, with a mouth veritably like Cupid's bow, and a figure matchless in contour. With her rich southern coloring and passionate temperament--she was of Irish blood on the paternal side--Miss Dallas looked more like an Andalusian lady than a native of the English-speaking race. She had all the sensuous loveliness of a Creole woman; and bloomed like a rich tropical flower with poison in its perfume amid the English briar roses of Surrey maidenhood.

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