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He owed it all to gout and megrims. He had won
the esteem of Governor Steed, and - what is even more important
- of Governor Steed's lady, whom he shamelessly and cynically
flattered and humoured.
Occasionally he saw Miss Bishop, and they seldom met but that she
paused to hold him in conversation for some moments, evincing her
interest in him. Himself, he was never disposed to linger. He was
not, he told himself, to be deceived by her delicate exterior, her
sapling grace, her easy, boyish ways and pleasant, boyish voice.
In all his life - and it had been very varied - he had never met a
man whom he accounted more beastly than her uncle, and he could not
dissociate her from the man. She was his niece, of his own blood,
and some of the vices of it, some of the remorseless cruelty of
the wealthy planter must, he argued, inhabit that pleasant body of
hers. He argued this very often to himself, as if answering and
convincing some instinct that pleaded otherwise, and arguing it he
avoided her when it was possible, and was frigidly civil when it
was not.


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