Meantime his deserted wife had died.  His daughter was taken care of by his brother, who married her as advantageously as was possible in the circumstances.

“Oh!  The Mrs. Doctor!” I exclaimed.

“You know that?  Yes.  A very able man.  He wanted a lift in the world, and there was a good bit of money from her mother, besides the expectations. . .  Of course, they don’t know him,” he added.  “The doctor nods in the street, I believe, but he avoids speaking to him when they meet on board a ship, as must happen sometimes.”

I remarked that this surely was an old story by now.

My friend assented.  But it was Jacobus’s own fault that it was neither forgiven nor forgotten.  He came back ultimately.  But how?  Not in a spirit of contrition, in a way to propitiate his scandalised fellow-citizens.  He must needs drag along with him a child—­a girl. . . .

“He spoke to me of a daughter who lives with him,” I observed, very much interested.

“She’s certainly the daughter of the circus-woman,” said my friend.  “She may be his daughter too; I am willing to admit that she is.  In fact I have no doubt—­”

But he did not see why she should have been brought into a respectable community to perpetuate the memory of the scandal.  And that was not the worst.  Presently something much more distressing happened.  That abandoned woman turned up.  Landed from a mail-boat. . . .

“What!  Here?  To claim the child perhaps,” I suggested.

“Not she!” My friendly informant was very scornful.  “Imagine a painted, haggard, agitated, desperate hag.  Been cast off in Mozambique by somebody who paid her passage here.  She had been injured internally by a kick from a horse; she hadn’t a cent on her when she got ashore; I don’t think she even asked to see the child.  At any rate, not till the last day of her life.  Jacobus hired for her a bungalow to die in.  He got a couple of Sisters from the hospital to nurse her through these few months.  If he didn’t marry her in extremis as the good Sisters tried to bring about, it’s because she wouldn’t even hear of it.  As the nuns said:  ’The woman died impenitent.’  It was reported that she ordered Jacobus out of the room with her last breath.  This may be the real reason why he didn’t go into mourning himself; he only put the child into black.  While she was little she was to be seen sometimes about the streets attended by a negro woman, but since she became of age to put her hair up I don’t think she has set foot outside that garden once.  She must be over eighteen now.”

Thus my friend, with some added details; such as, that he didn’t think the girl had spoken to three people of any position in the island; that an elderly female relative of the brothers Jacobus had been induced by extreme poverty to accept the position of gouvernante to the girl.  As to Jacobus’s business (which certainly annoyed his brother) it was a wise choice on his part.  It brought him in contact only with strangers of passage; whereas any other would have given rise to all sorts of awkwardness with his social equals.  The man was not wanting in a certain tact—­only he was naturally shameless.  For why did he want to keep that girl with him?  It was most painful for everybody.