Although Rachael was monotonously conscious of the iron that had impaled her soul, she was not quite unhappy at this time, and she never ceased to love Hamilton.  Whatever his lacks and failures, nothing could destroy his fascination as a man.  His love for her, although tranquillized by time, was still strong enough to keep alive his desire’ to please her, and he thought of her as his wife always.  He felt the change in her, and his soul rebelled bitterly at the destruction of his pedestal and halo, and all that fiction had meant to both of them; but he respected her reserve, and the subject never came up between them.  He knew that she never would love any one else, that she still loved him passionately, despite the shattered ideal of him; and he consoled himself with the reflection that even in giving him less than her entire store, she gave him, merely by being herself, more than he had thought to find in any woman.  His courteous attentions to her had never relaxed, and in time the old companionship was resumed; they read and discussed as in their other home; but this their little circle was widened by two, Alexander and Hugh Knox.  The uninterrupted intimacy of their first years was not to be resumed.

They saw little of the society of St. Croix.  In 1763 Christiana Huggins, visiting the Peter Lyttons, married her host’s brother, James, and settled on the Island.  She drove occasionally to the lonely estate in the east, but she had a succession of children and little time for old duties.  Rachael exchanged calls at long intervals with her sisters and their intimate friends, the Yards, Lillies, Crugers, Stevens, Langs, and Goodchilds, but she had been too great a lady to strive now for social position, practically dependent as she was on the charity of her relatives.

IV

In the third year of their life on St. Croix, Rachael discovered that Peter Lytton was dissatisfied with Hamilton, and retained him to his own detriment, out of sympathy for herself and her children.  From that time she had few tranquil moments.  It was as if, like the timid in the hurricane season, she sat constantly with ears strained for that first loud roar in the east.  She realized then that the sort of upheaval which shatters one’s economic life is but the precursor of other upheavals, and she thought on the unknown future until her strong soul was faint again.

Hamilton was one of those men whose gifts are ruined by their impulses, in whom the cultivation of sober judgement is interrupted by the excesses of a too sanguine temperament.  He was honourable, and always willing to admit his mistakes, but years and repeated failure did little toward balancing his faults and virtues.  In time he wore out the patience of even those who loved and admired him.  His wife remained his one loyal and unswerving friend, but her part in his life was near its finish.  The day came when Peter Lytton, exasperated once too often,