"Oh, they called me so because I was such a little round white baby. I couldn't have been very precious, though, or she never would have parted with me. Yes, I wish we might drift on some lazy current for years. I hate to shorten the distance. I stand in awe of my father, and I do not remember my mother."

"Do not remember?"

"She is so perfect, so superb, so different from me! But she ought to love her own child!"

"Her own child?"

"And then I do not know the customs of this strange land. Shall I be obliged to keep an establishment?"

"Keep an establishment?"

"It is very rude to repeat my words so! You oughtn't! Yes, keep an establishment!"

"I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle."

"No, it is I who am rude."

"Not at all,–but mysterious. I am quite in the dark concerning you."

"Concerning me?"

"Ah, Miss Marguerite, it is my turn now."

"Oh! It must be–This is your mystery, n'est ce pas? Mamma was my grandmamma. My own mother was far too young when mamma gave her in marriage; and, to make amends, mamma adopted me and left me her name and her fortune. So that I am very wealthy. And now shall I keep an establishment?"

"I should think not," said Mr. Raleigh, with a smile.

"Do you know, you constantly reassure me? Home grows less and less a bugbear when you speak of it. How strange! It seems as if I had known you a year, instead of a week."

"It would probably take that period of time to make us as well acquainted under other circumstances."

"I wish you were going to be with us always. Shall you stay in America, Mr. Raleigh?"

"Only till the fall. But I will leave you at your father's door"–

And then Mr. Raleigh ceased suddenly, as if he had promised an impossibility.

"How long before we reach New York?" she asked.

"In about nine hours," he replied,–adding, in unconscious undertone, "if ever."

"What was that you said to yourself?" she asked, in a light and gayly inquisitive voice, as she looked around and over the ship. "Why, how many there are on deck! It is such a beautiful night, I suppose. Eh, Mr. Raleigh?"

"Are you not tired of your position?" he asked. "Sit down beside me here." And he took a seat.

"No, I would rather stand. Tell me what you said."

"Sit, then, to please me, Marguerite, and I will tell you what I said."

She hesitated a moment, standing before him, the hood of her capote, with its rich purple, dropping from the fluttering yellow hair that the moonlight deepened into gold, and the fire-opal clasp rising and falling with her breath, like an imprisoned flame. He touched her hand, still warm and soft, with his own, which was icy. She withdrew it, turned her eyes, whose fair, faint lustre, the pale forget-me-not blue, was darkened by the antagonistic light to an amethystine shadow, inquiringly upon him.

"There is some danger," she murmured.

"Yes. When you are not a mark for general observation, you shall hear it."

"I would rather hear it standing."

"I told you the condition."

"Then I shall go and ask Captain Tarbell."

"And come sobbing back to me for 'reassurance.'"

"No," she said, quickly, "I should go down to Ursule."

"Ursule has a mattress on deck; I assisted her up."

"There is the captain! Now"–

He seized her hand and drew her down beside him. For an instant she would have resisted, as the sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks attested,–and then, with the instinctive feminine baseness that compels every woman, when once she has met her master, she submitted.

"I am sorry, if you are offended," said he. "But the captain cannot attend to you now, and it is necessary to be guarded in movement; for a slight thing on such occasions may produce a panic."

"You should not have forced me to sit," said she, in a smothered voice, without heeding him; "you had no right."

"This right, that I assume the care of you."

"Monsieur, you see that I am quite competent to the care of myself."

"Marguerite, I see that you are determined to quarrel."

She paused a moment, ere replying; then drew a little nearer and turned her face toward him, though without looking up.

"Forgive me, then!" said she. "But I would rather be naughty and froward, it lets me stay a child, and so you can take me in keeping, and I need not think for myself at all. But if I act like a woman grown, then comes all the responsibility, and I must rely on myself, which is such trouble now, though I never felt it so before,–I don't know why. Don't you see?" And she glanced at him with her head on one side, and laughing archly.

"You were right," he replied, after surveying her a moment; "my proffered protection is entirely superfluous."

She thought he was about to go, and placed her hand on his, as it lay along the side. "Don't leave me," she murmured.

"I have no intention of leaving you," he said.

"You are very good. I have never seen one like you. I love you well." And, bathed in moonlight, she raised her face and her glowing lips toward him.

Mr. Raleigh gazed in the innocent eyes a moment, to seek the extent of her meaning, and felt, that, should he take advantage of her childlike forgetfulness, he would be only reënacting the part he had so much condemned in one man years before. So he merely bent low over the hand that lay in his, raised it, and touched his lips to that. In an instant the color suffused her face, she snatched the hand away, half rose trembling from her seat, then sank into it again.

"Soit, Monsieur!" she exclaimed, abruptly. "But you have not told me the danger."

"It will not alarm you now?" he replied, laughing.

"I have said that I am not a coward."

"I wonder what you would think of me when I say that without doubt I am."

"You, Mr. Raleigh?" she cried, astonishment banishing anger.

"Not that I betray myself. But I have felt the true heart-sinking. Once, surprised in the centre of an insurrection, I expected to find my hair white as snow, if I escaped."

"Your hair is very black. And you escaped?"

"So it would appear."

"They suffered you to go on account of your terror? You feigned death? You took flight?"

"Hardly, neither."

"Tell me about it," she said, imperiously.

Though Mr. Raleigh had exchanged the singular reserve of his youth for a well-bred reticence, he scarcely cared to be his own hero.

"Tell me," said she. "It will shorten the time; and that is what you are trying to do, you know."

He laughed.

"It was once when I was obliged to make an unpleasant journey into the interior, and a detachment was placed at my service. We were in a suspected district quite favorable to their designs, and the commanding officer was attacked with illness in the night. Being called to his assistance, I looked abroad and fancied things wore an unusual aspect among the men, and sent Capua to steal down a covered path and see if anything were wrong. Never at fault, he discovered a revolt, with intent to murder my companion and myself, and retreat to the mountains. Of course there was but one thing to do. I put a pistol in my belt and walked down and in among them, singled out the ringleader, fixed him with my eye, and bade him approach. My appearance was so sudden and unsuspected that they forgot defiance."

"Bien, but I thought you were afraid."

"So I was. I could not have spoken a second word. I experienced intense terror, and that, probably, gave my glance a concentration of which I was unaware and by myself incapable; but I did not suffer it to waver; I could not have moved it, indeed; I kept it on the man while he crept slowly toward me. I shall never forget the horrible sensation. I did not dare permit myself to doubt his conquest; but if I had failed, as I then thought, his approach was like the slow coil of a serpent about me, and it was his glittering eyes that had fixed mine, and not mine his. At my feet, I commanded him, with a gesture, to disarm. He obeyed, and I breathed; and one by one they followed his example. Capua, who was behind me, I sent back with the weapons, and in the morning gave them their choice of returning to town with their hands tied behind their backs, or of going on with me and remaining faithful. They chose the latter, did me good service, and I said nothing about the affair."

"That was well. But were you really frightened?"

"So I said. I cannot think of it yet without a slight shudder."

"Yes, and a rehearsal. Your eyes charge bayonets now. I am not a Sepoy."

"Well, you are still angry with me?"

"How can I be angry with you?"

"How, indeed? So much your senior that you owe me respect, Miss Marguerite. I am quite old enough to be your father."

"You are, Sir?" she replied, with surprise. "Why, are you fifty-five years old?"

"Is that Mr. Laudersdale's age?"

"How did you know Mr. Laudersdale Was my father?"

"By an arithmetical process. That is his age?"

"Yes; and yours?"

"Not exactly. I was thirty-seven last August."

"And will be thirty-eight next?"

"That is the logical deduction."

"I shall give you a birthday-gift when you are just twice my age."

"By what courier will you make it reach me?"

"Oh, I forgot. But–Mr. Raleigh?"

"What is it?" he replied, turning to look at her,–for his eyes had been wandering over the deck.

"I thought you would ask me to write to you."

"No, that would not be worth while."

His face was too grave for her to feel indignation.

"Why?" she demanded.

"It would give me great pleasure, without doubt. But in a week you will have too many other cares and duties to care for such a burden."

"That shows that you do not know me at all. Vous en avez usé mal avec moi!"

Though Mr. Raleigh still looked at her, he did not reply. She rose and walked away a few steps, coming back.

"You are always in the right, and I consequently in the wrong," she said. "How often to-night have I asked pardon? I will not put up with it!"

"We shall part in a few hours," he replied; "when you lose your temper, I lose my time."

"In a few hours? Then is the danger which you mentioned past?"

"I scarcely think so."

"Now I am not going to be diverted again. What is this dreadful danger?"

"Let me tell you, in the first place, that we shall probably make the port before our situation becomes apparently worse,–that we do not take to the boats, because we are twice too many to fill them, owing to the Belle Voyageuse, and because it might excite mutiny, and for several other becauses,–that every one is on deck, Capua consoling Ursule, the captain having told to each, personally, the possibility of escape"–

"Allez au hut!"

"That the lights are closed, the hatches battened down, and by dint of excluding the air we can keep the flames in a smouldering state and sail into harbor a shell of safety over this core of burning coal."

"Reducing the equation, the ship is on fire?"

"Yes."

She did not speak for a moment or two, and he saw that she was quite faint. Soon recovering herself,–

"And what do you think of the mirage now?" she asked. "Where is Ursule? I must go to her," she added suddenly, after a brief silence, starting to her feet.

"Shall I accompany you?"

"Oh, no."

"She lies on a mattress there, behind that group,"–nodding in the implied direction; "and it would be well, if you could lie beside her and get an hour's rest."

"Me? I couldn't sleep. I shall come back to you,–may I?" And she was gone.

Mr. Raleigh still sat in the position in which she had left him, when, a half-hour afterward, she returned.

"Where is your cloak?" he asked, rising to receive her.

"I spread it over Ursule, she was so chilly."

"You will not take cold?"

"I? I am on fire myself."

"Ah, I see; you have the Saturnalian spirit in you."

"It is like the Revolution, the French, is it not?–drifting on before the wind of Fate, this ship full of fire and all red-hot raging turbulence. Just look up the long sparkling length of these white, full shrouds, swelling and curving like proud swans, in the gale,–and then imagine the devouring monster below in his den!"

"Don't imagine it. Be quiet and sit beside me. Half the night is gone."

"I remember reading of some pirates once, who, driving forward to destruction on fearful breakers, drank and sang and died madly. I wish the whole ship's company would burst out in one mighty chorus now, or that we might rush together with tumultuous impulse and dance,–dance wildly into death and daylight."

"We have nothing to do with death," said Mr. Raleigh. "Our foe is simply time. You dance, then?"

"Oh, yes. I dance well,–like those white fluttering butterflies,–as if I were au gré du vent."

"That would not be dancing well."

"It would not be dancing well to be at the will of the wind, but it is perfection to appear so."

"The dance needs the expression of the dancer's will. It is breathing sculpture. It is mimic life beyond all other arts."

"Then well I love to dance. And I do dance well. Wait,–you shall see."

He detained her.

"Be still, little maid!" he said, and again drew her beside him, though she still continued standing.

At this moment the captain approached.

"What cheer?" asked Mr. Raleigh.

"No cheer," he answered, gloomily, dinting his finger-nails into his palm. "The planks forward are already hot to the hand. I tremble at every creak of cordage, lest the deck crash in and bury us all."

"You have made the Sandy Hook light?"

"Yes; too late to run her ashore."

"You cannot try that at the Highlands?"

"Certain death."

"The wind scarcely"–

"Veered a point I am carrying all sail. But if this tooth of fire gnaws below, you will soon see the masts go by the board. And then we are lost, indeed!"

"Courage! she will certainly hold together till you can hail the pilots."

"I think no one need tremble when he has such an instance of fearlessness before him," replied the captain, bowing to Marguerite; and turning away, he hid his suspense and pain again under a calm countenance.

Standing all this while beside Mr. Raleigh, she had heard the whole of the conversation, and he felt the hand in his growing colder as it continued. He wondered if it were still the same excitement that sent the alternate flush and pallor up her cheek. She sat down, leaning her head back against the bulwark, as if to look at the stars, and suffering the light, fine hair to blow about her temples before the steady breeze. He bent over to look into her eyes, and found them fixed and lustreless.

"Marguerite!" he exclaimed.

She tried to speak, but the teeth seemed to hinder the escape of her words, and to break them into bits of sound; a shiver shook her from head to foot.

"I wonder if this is fear," she succeeded in saying. "Oh, if there were somewhere to go, something to hide me! A great horror is upon me! I am afraid! Seigneur Dieu! Mourir par le feu! Périssons alors au plus vite!" And she shuddered, audibly.

Mr. Raleigh passed his arm about her and gathered her closer to himself. He saw at once, that, sensitive as she was to every impression, this fear was a contagious one, a mere gregarian affinity, and that she needed the preponderating warmth and strength of a protecting presence, the influence of a fuller vitality. He did not speak, but his touch must in some measure have counteracted the dread that oppressed her. She ceased trembling, but did not move.

The westering moon went to bury herself in banks of cloud; the wind increasing piped and whistled in strident threatening through the rigging; the ship vibrated to the concussive voice of the minute-gun. No murmurs but those of wind and water were heard among the throng; they drove forward in awful, pallid silence. Suddenly the shriek of one voice, but from fourscore throats, rent the agonized quiet. A red light was running along the deck, a tongue of flame lapping round the forecastle, a spire shooting aloft. Marguerite hid her face in Mr. Raleigh's arm; a great sob seemed to go up from all the people. The captain's voice thundered through the tumult, and instantly the mates sprang forward and the jib went crashing overboard. Mr. Raleigh tore his eyes away from the fascination of this terror, and fixed them by chance on two black specks that danced on the watery horizon. He gazed with intense vision a moment. "The tugs!" he cried. The words thrilled with hope in every dying heart; they no longer saw themselves the waiting prey of pain and death, of flames and sea. Some few leaped into the boat at the stern, lowered and cut it away; others dropped spontaneously into file, and passed the dripping buckets of sea-water, to keep, if possible, the flames in check. Mr. Raleigh and Marguerite crossed over to Ursule.

The sight of her nurse, passive in despair, restored to the girl a portion of her previous spirit. She knelt beside her, talking low and rapidly, now and then laughing, and all the time communicating nerve with her light, firm finger-touches. Except their quick and unintelligible murmurs, and the plash and hiss of water, nothing else broke the torturing hush of expectation. There was a half-hour of breathless watch ere the steam-tugs were alongside. Already the place was full of fervid torment, and they had climbed upon every point to leave below the stings of the blistering deck. None waited on the order of their going, but thronged and sprang precipitately. Ursule was at once deposited in safety. The captain moved to conduct Marguerite across, but she drew back and clung to Mr. Raleigh.

"J'ai honte," she said; "je ne bougerai pas plus tót que vous."

The breath of the fierce flames scorched her cheek as she spoke, the wind of their roaring progress swept her hair. He lifted her over without further consultation, and still kept her in his care.

There was a strange atmosphere on board the little vessels, as they labored about and parted from the doomed Osprey. Many were subdued with awe and joy at their deliverance; others broke the tense strain of the last hours in suffocating sobs. Every throb of the panting engines they answered with waiting heart-beats, as it sent them farther from the fearful wonder, now blazing in multiplex lines of fire against the gray horizon. Mr. Raleigh gazed after it as one watches the conflagration of a home. Marguerite left her quiet weeping to gaze with him. An hour silently passed, and as the fiery phantom faded into dawn and distance she sang sweetly the first few lines of an old French hymn. Another voice took up the measure, stronger and clearer; those who knew nothing of the words caught the spirit of the tune; and no choral service ever pealed up temple-vaults with more earnest accord than that in which this chant of grateful, exultant devotion now rose from rough-throated men and weary women in the crisp air and yellowing spring-morning.

As the moment of parting approached, Marguerite stood with folded hands before Mr. Raleigh, looking sadly down the harbor.

"I regret all that," she said,–"these days that seem years."

"An equivocal phrase," he replied, with a smile.

"But you know what I mean. I am going to strangers; I have been with you. I shall find no one so kind to me as you have been, Monsieur."

"Your strangers can be much kinder to you than I have been."

"Never! I wish they did not exist! What do I care for them? What do they care for me? They do not know me; I shall shock them. I miss you, I hate them, already. Non! Personne ne m'aime, et je n'aime personne!" she exclaimed, with low-toned vehemence.

"Rite," began Mr. Raleigh.

"Rite! No one but my mother ever called me that. How did you know it?"

"I have met your mother, and I knew you a great many years ago."

"Mr. Raleigh!" And there was the least possible shade of unconscious regret in the voice before it added,–"And what was I?"

"You were some little wood-spirit, the imp of a fallen cone, mayhap, or the embodiment of birch-tree shadows. You were a soiled and naughty little beauty, not so different from your present self, and who kissed me on the lips."

"And did you refuse to take the kiss?"

He laughed.

"You were a child then," he said. "And I was not"–

"Was not?"–

Here the boat swung round at her moorings, and the shock prevented Mr. Raleigh's finishing his sentence.

"Ursule is with us, or on the other one?" she asked.

"With us."

"That is fortunate. She is all I have remaining, by which to prove my identity."

"As if there could be two such maidens in the world!"

Marguerite left him, a moment, to give Captain Tarbell her address, and returning, they were shortly afterward seated side by side in a coach, Capua and Ursule following in another. As they stopped at the destined door, Mr. Raleigh alighted and extended his hand. She lingered a moment ere taking it,–not to say adieu, nor to offer him cheek or lip again.

"Que je te remercie!" she murmured, lifting her eyes to his. "Que je te trouve bon!" and sprang before him up the steps.

He heard her father meet her in the hall; Ursule had already joined them; he reëntered the coach and rolled rapidly beyond recall.

The burning of the Osprey did not concern Mr. Raleigh's business-relations. Carrying his papers about him, he had personally lost thereby nothing of consequence. He refreshed himself, and proceeded at once to the transactions awaiting him. In a brief time he found that affairs wore a different aspect from that for which he had been instructed, and letters from the house had already arrived, by the overland route, which required mutual reply and delay before he could take further steps; so that Mr. Raleigh found himself with some months of idleness upon his hands, in a land with not a friend. There lay a little scented billet, among the documents on his table, that had at first escaped his attention; he took it up wonderingly, and broke the seal. It was from his Cousin Kate, and had been a few days before him. Mrs. McLean had heard of his expected arrival, it said, and begged him, if he had any time to spare, to spend it with her in his old home by the lake, whither every summer they had resorted to meditate on the virtues of the departed. There was added, in a different hand, whose delicate and pointed characters seemed singularly familiar,–

"Come o'er the stream, Charlie, dear Charlie,
brave Charlie!
"Come o'er the stream, Charlie, and dine
wi' McLean!"

Mr. Raleigh looked at the matter a few moments; he did not think it best to remain long in the city; he would be glad to know if sight of the old scenes could renew a throb. He answered his letters, replenished his wardrobe, and took, that same day, the last train for the North. At noon of the second day thereafter he found Mr. McLean's coach, with that worthy gentleman in person, awaiting him, and he stepped out, when it paused at the foot of his former garden, with a strange sense of the world as an old story, a twice-told tale, a maze of error.

Mrs. McLean came running down to meet him,–a face less round and rosy than once, as the need of pink cap-ribbons testified, but smiling and bright as youth.

"The same little Kate," said Mr. Raleigh, after the first greeting, putting his hands on her shoulders and smiling down at her benevolently.

"Not quite the same Roger, though," said she, shaking her head. "I expected this stain on your skin; but, dear me! your eyes look as if you had not a friend in the world."

"How can they look so, when you give me such a welcome?"

"Dear old Roger, you are just the same," said she, bestowing a little caress upon his sleeve. "And if you remember the summer before you went away, you will not find that pleasant company so very much changed either."

"I do not expect to find them at all."

"Oh, then they will find you; because they are all here,–at least the principals; some with different names, and some, like myself, with duplicates,"–as a shier Kate came down toward them, dragging a brother and sister by the hand, and shaking chestnut curls over rosy blushes.

After making acquaintance with the new cousins, Mr. Raleigh turned again to Mrs. McLean.

"And who are there here?" he asked.

"There is Mrs. Purcell,–you remember Helen Heath? Poor Mrs. Purcell, whom you knew, died, and her slippers fitted Helen. She chaperons Mary, who is single and speechless yet; and Captain, now Colonel, Purcell makes a very good silent partner. He is hunting in the West, on furlough; she is here alone. There is Mrs. Heath,–you never have forgotten her?"

"Not I."

"There is"–

"And how came you all in the country so early in the season,–anybody with your devotion to company?"

"To be made April fools, John says."

"Why, the willows are not yet so yellow as they will be."

"I know it. But we had the most fatiguing winter; and Mrs. Laudersdale and I agreed, that, the moment the snow was off the ground up here, we would fly away and be at rest."

"Mrs. Laudersdale? Can she come here?"

"Goodness! Why not? The last few summers we have always spent together."

"She is with you now, then?"

"Oh, yes. She is the least changed of all. I didn't mean to tell, but keep her as a surprise. Of course, you will be a surprise to everybody.–There, run along, children; we'll follow.–Yes, won't it be delightful, Roger? We can all play at youth again."

"Like skeletons in some Dance of Death!" he exclaimed. "We shall be hideous in each other's sight."

"McLean, I am a bride," said his wife, not heeding the late misanthropy; "Helen is a girl; the ghost of the prior Mrs. Purcell shall be rediviva; and Katy there"–

"Wait a bit, Kate," said her cousin.

"Before you have shuffled off mortality for the whole party, sit down under this hedge,–here is an opportune bench,–and give me accounts from the day of my departure."

"Dear me, Roger, as if that were possible! The ocean in a tea-cup? Let me see,–you had a flirtation with Helen that summer, didn't you? Well, she spent the next winter at the Fort with the Purcells. It was odd to miss both her and Mrs. Laudersdale from society at once. Mrs. Laudersdale was ill; I don't know exactly what the trouble was. You know she had been in such an unusual state of exhilaration all that summer; and as soon as she left New Hampshire and began the old city-life, she became oppressed with a speechless melancholy, I believe, so that the doctors foreboded insanity. She expressed great disinclination to follow their advice, and her husband finally banished them all. It was a great care to him; he altered much. McLean surmised that she didn't like to see him, while she was in this state; for, though he used to surround her with every luxury, and was always hunting out new appliances, and raising the heavens for a trifle, he kept himself carefully out of her sight during the greater part of the winter. I don't know whether she became insufferably lonely, or whether the melancholy wore off, or she conquered it, and decided that it was not right to go crazy for nothing, or what happened. But one cold March evening he set out for his home, dreary, as usual, he thought; and he found the fire blazing and reddening the ceiling and curtains, the room all aglow with rich shadows, and his wife awaiting him, in full toilet, just as superb as you will see her tonight, just as sweet and cold and impassible and impenetrable. At least," continued Mrs. McLean, taking breath, "I have manufactured this little romance out of odds and ends that McLean has now and then reported from his conversation. I dare say there isn't a bit of it true, for Mr. Laudersdale isn't a man to publish his affairs; but I believe it. One thing is certain: Mrs. Laudersdale withdrew from society one autumn and returned one spring, and has queened it ever since."

"Is Mr. Laudersdale with you?"

"No. But he will come with their daughter shortly."

"And with what do you all occupy yourselves, pray?"

"Oh, with trifles and tea, as you would suppose us to do. Mrs. Purcell gossips and lounges, as if she were playing with the world for spectator. Mrs. Laudersdale lounges, and attacks things with her finger-ends, as if she were longing to remould them. Mrs. McLean gossips and scolds, as if it depended on her to keep the world in order."

"Are you going to keep me under the hedge all night?"

"This is pretty well! Hush! Who is that?"

As Mrs. McLean spoke, a figure issued from the tall larches on the left, and crossed the grass in front of them,–a woman, something less tall than a gypsy queen might be, the round outlines of her form rich and regular, with a certain firm luxuriance, still wrapped in a morning-robe of palm-spread cashmere. In her hand she carried various vines and lichens that had maintained their orange-tawny stains under the winter's snow, and the black hair that was folded closely over forehead and temple was crowned with bent sprays of the scarlet maple-blossom. As vivid a hue dyed her cheek through warm walking, and with a smile of unconscious content she passed quickly up the slope and disappeared within the doorway. She impressed the senses of the beholder like some ripe and luscious fruit, a growth of sunshine and summer.

"Well," said Mrs. McLean, drawing breath again, "who is it?"

"Really, I cannot tell," replied Mr. Raleigh.

"Nor guess?"

"And that I dare not."

"Must I tell you?"

"Was it Mrs. Laudersdale?"

"And shouldn't you have known her?"

"Scarcely."

"Mercy! Then how did you know me? She is unaltered."

"If that is Mrs. Purcell, at the window, she does not recognize me, you see; neither did –. Both she and yourself are nearly the same; one could not fail to know either of you; but of the Mrs. Laudersdale of thirteen years ago there remains hardly a vestige."

If Mrs. McLean, at this testimony, indulged in that little inward satisfaction which the most generous woman may feel, when told that her color wears better than the color of her dearest friend, it must have been quickly quenched by the succeeding sentence.

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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 38, December, 1860

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