Justifiable as his reasoning was, plausible as it may seem, yet he
would have done better to have trusted the instinct that was in
conflict with it. Though the same blood ran in her veins as in
those of Colonel Bishop, yet hers was free of the vices that tainted
her uncle's, for these vices were not natural to that blood; they
were, in his case, acquired. Her father, Tom Bishop - that same
Colonel Bishop's brother - had been a kindly, chivalrous, gentle
soul, who, broken-hearted by the early death of a young wife, had
abandoned the Old World and sought an anodyne for his grief in
the New. He had come out to the Antilles, bringing with him his
little daughter, then five years of age, and had given himself up
to the life of a planter. He had prospered from the first, as men
sometimes will who care nothing for prosperity. Prospering, he
had bethought him of his younger brother, a soldier at home
reputed somewhat wild. He had advised him to come out to Barbados;
and the advice, which at another season William Bishop might have
scorned, reached him at a moment when his wildness was beginning to
bear such fruit that a change of climate was desirable.
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