Oolanga was disappointed, but he dared not exhibit any feeling lest it should betray that he was hiding.  Therefore he slunk downstairs again noiselessly, and waited for a more favourable opportunity of furthering his plans.  It must be borne in mind that he thought that the heavy trunk was full of valuables, and that he believed that Lady Arabella had come to try to steal it.  His purpose of using for his own advantage the combination of these two ideas was seen later in the day.  Oolanga secretly followed her home.  He was an expert at this game, and succeeded admirably on this occasion.  He watched her enter the private gate of Diana’s Grove, and then, taking a roundabout course and keeping out of her sight, he at last overtook her in a thick part of the Grove where no one could see the meeting.

Lady Arabella was much surprised.  She had not seen the negro for several days, and had almost forgotten his existence.  Oolanga would have been startled had he known and been capable of understanding the real value placed on him, his beauty, his worthiness, by other persons, and compared it with the value in these matters in which he held himself.  Doubtless Oolanga had his dreams like other men.  In such cases he saw himself as a young sun-god, as beautiful as the eye of dusky or even white womanhood had ever dwelt upon.  He would have been filled with all noble and captivating qualities—­or those regarded as such in West Africa.  Women would have loved him, and would have told him so in the overt and fervid manner usual in affairs of the heart in the shadowy depths of the forest of the Gold Coast.

Oolanga came close behind Lady Arabella, and in a hushed voice, suitable to the importance of his task, and in deference to the respect he had for her and the place, began to unfold the story of his love.  Lady Arabella was not usually a humorous person, but no man or woman of the white race could have checked the laughter which rose spontaneously to her lips.  The circumstances were too grotesque, the contrast too violent, for subdued mirth.  The man a debased specimen of one of the most primitive races of the earth, and of an ugliness which was simply devilish; the woman of high degree, beautiful, accomplished.  She thought that her first moment’s consideration of the outrage—­it was nothing less in her eyes—­had given her the full material for thought.  But every instant after threw new and varied lights on the affront.  Her indignation was too great for passion; only irony or satire would meet the situation.  Her cold, cruel nature helped, and she did not shrink to subject this ignorant savage to the merciless fire-lash of her scorn.

Oolanga was dimly conscious that he was being flouted; but his anger was no less keen because of the measure of his ignorance.  So he gave way to it, as does a tortured beast.  He ground his great teeth together, raved, stamped, and swore in barbarous tongues and with barbarous imagery.  Even Lady Arabella felt that it was well she was within reach of help, or he might have offered her brutal violence—­even have killed her.