tell Mr. Rayner, and there was no way of letting him know without telling him. There was nothing for it but to hope that little Jane would be wise and leave off provoking Sarah, and that Providence would bring Sarah herself to a better mind.

But what a dreadful woman to have in the house! And why had the stranger spoken of Tom Parkes as “Jim”?

CHAPTER VI.

The next morning I woke up with that strange feeling of oppression which is caused by something unpleasant heard the night before. I soon remembered what it was, and tried to shake off the recollection of the talk in the plantation and of Sarah’s vindictive tones. I looked at her searchingly as she came in demurely to prayers with the cook and poor little Jane, and I could not help thinking that Tom Parkes, or “Jim” as the stranger had called him--but then a man of such a desperate character as they had described him to be would have a dozen aliases--might be excused in preferring the simple little kitchen-maid Jane to that forbidding-looking shrew. But perhaps, when he first made love to her, she was young and comparatively fair; and, if so, he ought not to desert her just because she had grown thin and hard-looking in doing the wicked things he made her do. What were those wicked things? I wondered. I had seen Tom Parkes, a strongly-made thick-set young man, two or three times, and he had seemed to me to have a stolid but rather good-humored expression; I should have thought him to be more stupid than wicked, and certainly not the sort of man to rule with a rod of iron the formidable Sarah.That very day I had an opportunity of comparing my impression of Tom, when I thought him a harmless and inoffensive person, with my impression of him now that I knew him to be a rogue of the most determined kind. When Haidee and I returned from our walk, we came into the garden by a side-gate at the back of the house, and had to pass by the servants’ entrance. Tom Parkes was sitting outside the door in as easy an attitude as the broken chair he sat on would permit, eating bread and cheese; while opposite to him stood Jane and Sarah, both apparently in high good humor. One held a jug, the other a glass, and they seemed united in the desire to please him by ministering to his wants, and by a rough kind of humor to which he was not slow in replying. They were talking about kisses, and I think they were going to illustrate the subject, when Tom suddenly became aware of our presence, and, taking his arm from round Jane’s waist, pulled his cap off apologetically and remained standing until we had gone by.

What a strange 

 Prev. P 38/247 next