He owed it all to gout and megrims.

He had won the esteem of Governor Steed, and--what is even more important--of Governor Steed's lady, whom he shamelessly and cynically flattered and humoured.
Occasionally he saw Miss Bishop, and they seldom met but that she paused to hold him in conversation for some moments, evincing her interest in him.

Himself, he was never disposed to linger.

He was not, he told himself, to be deceived by her delicate exterior, her sapling grace, her easy, boyish ways and pleasant, boyish voice.

In all his life--and it had been very varied--he had never met a man whom he accounted more beastly than her uncle, and he could not dissociate her from the man.
She was his niece, of his own blood, and some of the vices of it, some of the remorseless cruelty of the wealthy planter must, he argued, inhabit that pleasant body of hers.