The last affliction the Fawcetts expected was another child.  This little girl came an unwelcome guest to a mother who hated the father, and to Dr. Fawcett, not only because he had outgrown all liking for crying babies, but because, as in his excited disturbance he admitted to his wife, his fortune was reduced by speculations in London, and he had no desire to turn to in his old age and support another child.  Then Mary Fawcett made up her definite mind:  she announced her intention to leave her husband while it was yet possible to save her property for herself and the child to whom she soon became passionately attached.  Dr. Fawcett laughed and shut himself up in a wing where the sounds of baby distress could not reach him; and it is doubtful if his glance ever lingered on the lovely face of his youngest born.  Thus came into the world under the most painful conditions one of the unhappiest women that has lived.  It was her splendid destiny to become the mother of the greatest American of his centuries, but this she died too soon to know, and she accomplished her part with an immediate bitterness of lot which was remorselessly ordained, no doubt, by the great Law of Compensation.

There were no divorce laws on the Islands in the eighteenth century, not even an act for separate maintenance; but Mary Fawcett was a woman of resource.  It took her four years to accomplish her purpose, but she got rid of Dr. Fawcett by making him more than anxious to be rid of her.  The Captain-General, William Matthew, was her staunch friend and admirer, and espoused her cause to the extent of issuing a writ of supplicavit for a separate maintenance.  Dr. Fawcett gradually yielded to pressure, separated her property from his, that it might pass under her personal and absolute control, and settled on her the sum of fifty-three pounds, four shillings annually, as a full satisfaction for all her dower or third part of his estate.

Mistress Fawcett was no longer a woman of consequence, for even her personal income was curtailed by the great drought of 1737, and Nevis, complaisant to the gallantry of the age, was scandalized at the novelty of a public separation.  But she was free, and she was the woman to feel that freedom to her finger tips; she could live a life with no will in it but her own, and she could bring up her little girl in an atmosphere of peace and affection.  She moved to an estate she owned on St. Christopher and never saw John Fawcett again.  He died a few years later, leaving his diminished property to his children.  Rachael’s share was the house in Charles Town.

The spot on which Rachael spent her childhood and brief youth was one of the most picturesque on the mountain range of St. Christopher.  Facing the sea, the house stood on a lofty eminence, in the very shadow of Mount Misery.  Immediately behind the house were the high peaks of the range, hardly less in pride than the cone of the great volcano.  The house was built on a ledge, but one could step from