"Well, the poor devil seems very sorry for having offended you so much by his persistence, Mrs. Marston," said the planter with a laugh, "and he writes such a pretty letter that I'm sure you won't withhold your forgiveness."
"I don't think I can. But I must see what he has written to me," and she opened the letter. It contained but a very few lines in the same tenour as that to Raymond, deploring his folly and begging her forgiveness.
"I'm very glad, Tom, that Amy sent him the £500, and that he had the sense not to again refuse it. It would always be embarrassing to you, Amy, whenever you met him."
"It would indeed. But I doubt if he would have accepted it if it had not been for Mr. Raymond's strongly worded letter on the subject," (The planter had sent the money to him in Apia with a note saying that whatever her feelings were towards him, Mrs. Marston would be additionally aggrieved if he refused to accept a bequest from her late husband; it would, he said, have the result of making the lady feel that his rejection of the gift was uncalled-for and discourteous.)
"So that's all right," said Raymond, as he rose to return to the beach. "I always liked the man, as you have often heard me say. And you really must not be too angry with him, Mrs. Marston. These Italians--like all Latins--are a fearfully idiotic people in some things--especially where women are concerned. Now almost any decent Anglo-Saxon would have taken his gruelling quietly if a woman told him three times that she didn't want him. Frohmann thinks that that crack on the head has touched his brain a bit; and at the same time, you must remember, Mrs. Marston, that whether you like it or not, you won't be able to prevent men from falling in love with you--look at me, for instance!"
Marie Raymond threw a reel of cotton at him--
A few days later the _Lupetea_ (White Pigeon) ran into the bay and Raymond boarded her. He greeted Villari in a friendly manner, and tried to put him at his ease by at once remarking that the ladies would be very glad to see him again when he had time to come up to the house. The schooner was loaded with a general cargo for the various traders and planters on the south side of the island, and that for Raymond consisted principally of about forty tons of yams for the use of the numerous local labourers already employed on the plantations.