A Crown of Shame, Volume I by Florence Marryat

Liz stood where he had left her, awestruck and bewildered. All her private trouble of that evening -- the sickening doubts she had conceived of her lover's fidelity, and her fears for Maraquita's safety -- faded before the humbling truths she had just heard. _This_, then, was the solution of the riddle which had so long puzzled her -- the meaning of her father's secret anxiety and depression. He was a criminal, whose crime was known to the law, and who had only escaped justice by yielding up his birthright and hiding on the plantation of his benefactor, Mr Courtney. It was a _very_ bitter truth to swallow.

Liz wondered how much Mrs Courtney and Maraquita knew of their disgrace, and what revulsion of feeling it might not cause in the breast of Henri de Courcelles. The thought of her lover caused a sharp pang to Lizzie. What terrible thing was about to happen in the future for her with regard to him? Her father's revelation had raised a new barrier between them -- one which honour compelled her to feel could never be surmounted until she was permitted to reveal it; and what consequences might not follow such a confession. As Liz pondered on the difficulties in her path, she shivered to hear the keening of the night breeze as it sighed through the branches of the coffee trees, and the far-off wailing which could occasionally be heard from the negroes' huts. They seemed like a requiem over the ashes of her love and blighted hope.