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"Bah! you black parrot!" muttered Maurice scornfully and turned upon his heel. As he vanished down the walk Dido clapped her hands together with great satisfaction and began to sing in low tones. Her song was barbaric in words and strange beyond all telling in the music. It rose and fell, and moaned and drawled, in a curiously painful manner. In the drawing-room Mrs. Dallas had risen to her feet at the first deep contralto note, and now stood rocking herself to and fro with an expression of alarm on her face. Isabella was terrified in her turn by Dido's song and her mother's strange conduct, though by this time she should have been used to these eccentricities., "See here," interrupted Miss Jinny, cocking her eyes severely at Bruce. "I'm not going to have Patricia hobnobbing with those Bohemians!", In the meantime Maurice walked slowly homeward, puzzling out in his own mind as to what could be the meaning of these strange things. He could not understand why Mrs. Dallas objected to him as a son-in-law; nor could he surmise the meaning of the mysterious word, "Voodoo," pronounced so significantly by Dido, However, he saw plainly that the negress was the disturbing element in the Dallas household, and by a half-hypnotic control over the weak will of her mistress, she could act as she pleased. The widow had been born and brought up in the Barbadoes. She was a half-educated woman of feeble intellect, and having been left during the time her mind and character were being formed solely to the society of black servants, she had imbibed--not unnaturally--many of the debased superstitions of Africa. Dido knew this, and by means of her claims to a knowledge of Obi, she was enabled to rule Mrs. Dallas, and also, as has been stated, to exercise a powerful influence over the plastic mind of Isabella..