When she attempted to speak her first words were lost in a stifled sob that sounded strangely coming from that woman who, of all human passions, seemed to know only those of anger and hate.
"You are going away to be a great Ranee," she said at last, in a voice that was steady enough now, "and if you be wise you shall have much power that will endure many days, and even last into your old age.

What have I been?
A slave all my life, and I have cooked rice for a man who had no courage and no wisdom.

Hai! I! even I, was given in gift by a chief and a warrior to a man that was neither.

Hai! Hai!" She wailed to herself softly, lamenting the lost possibilities of murder and mischief that could have fallen to her lot had she been mated with a congenial spirit.

Nina bent down over Mrs.Almayer's slight form and scanned attentively, under the stars that had rushed out on the black sky and now hung breathless over that strange parting, her mother's shrivelled features, and looked close into the sunken eyes that could see into her own dark future by the light of a long and a painful experience.
Again she felt herself fascinated, as of old, by her mother's exalted mood and by the oracular certainty of expression which, together with her fits of violence, had contributed not a little to the reputation for witchcraft she enjoyed in the settlement.
* * * * * "I was a slave, and you shall be a queen," went on Mrs.Almayer, looking straight before her; "but remember men's strength and their weakness.
Tremble before his anger, so that he may see your fear in the light of day; but in your heart you may laugh, for after sunset he is your slave." "A slave! He! The master of life! You do not know him, mother." Mrs.Almayer condescended to laugh contemptuously.
"You speak like a fool of a white woman," she exclaimed.