“They are tropical flowers,” observed Alfred.  “There is nothing Northern in their natures.”

“Yes, they are tropical flowers,” rejoined the father, “and my wish is to place them in perpetual sunshine.  I doubt whether they could ever feel quite at home far away from jasmines and orange-groves.  But climate is the least of the impediments in the way of taking them to New England.  Their connection with the enslaved race is so very slight, that it might easily be concealed; but the consciousness of practising concealment is always unpleasant.  Your father was more free from prejudices of all sorts than any man I ever knew.  If he were living, I would confide all to him, and be guided implicitly by his advice.  You resemble him so strongly, that I have been involuntarily drawn to open my heart to you, as I never thought to do to so young a man.  Yet I find the fulness of my confidence checked by the fear of lowering myself in the estimation of the son of my dearest friend.  But perhaps, if you knew all the circumstances, and had had my experience, you would find some extenuation of my fault.  I was very unhappy when I first came to New Orleans.  I was devotedly attached to a young lady, and I was rudely repelled by her proud and worldly family.  I was seized with a vehement desire to prove to them that I could become richer than they were.  I rushed madly into the pursuit of wealth, and I was successful; but meanwhile they had married her to another, and I found that wealth alone could not bring happiness.  In vain the profits of my business doubled and quadrupled.  I was unsatisfied, lonely, and sad.  Commercial transactions brought me into intimate relations with Senor Gonsalez, a Spanish gentleman in St. Augustine.  He had formed an alliance with a beautiful slave, whom he had bought in the French West Indies.  I never saw her, for she died before my acquaintance with him; but their daughter, then a girl of sixteen, was the most charming creature I ever beheld.  The irresistible attraction I felt toward her the first moment I saw her was doubtless the mere fascination of the senses; but when I came to know her more, I found her so gentle, so tender, so modest, and so true, that I loved her with a strong and deep affection.  I admired her, too, for other reasons than her beauty; for she had many elegant accomplishments, procured by her father’s fond indulgence during two years’ residence in Paris.  He was wealthy at that time; but he afterward became entangled in pecuniary difficulties, and his health declined.  He took a liking to me, and proposed that I should purchase Eulalia, and thus enable him to cancel a debt due to a troublesome creditor whom he suspected of having an eye upon his daughter.  I gave him a large sum for her, and brought her with me to New Orleans.  Do not despise me for it, my young friend.  If it had been told to me a few years before, in my New England home, that I could ever become a party in such a transaction, I should