Callers began to arrive rapidly.  There was a line of carriages at the door, and still it lengthened.  Mrs. King received them all with graceful courtesy, and endeavored to say something pleasing to each; but in the midst of it all, she never lost sight of Gerald and Eulalia.  After a short time she beckoned to her daughter with a slight motion of her fan, and spoke a few words to her aside.  The young girl left the room, and did not return to it.  Fitzgerald, after interchanging some brief remarks with Mr. King about the classes at Cambridge, approached the cantatrice, and said in lowered tones:  “I tried to call early with the hope of hearing you sing.  But I was detained by business for grandfather; and even if you were graciously inclined to gratify my presumptuous wish, you will not be released from company this morning.  May I say, Au revoir?”

“Certainly,” she replied, looking up at him with an expression in her beautiful eyes that produced a glow of gratified vanity.  He bowed good morning, with the smiling conviction that he was a great favorite with the distinguished lady.

When the last caller had retired, Mrs. King, after exchanging some general observations with her husband concerning her impressions of Boston and its people, seated herself at the window, with a number of Harper’s Weekly in her hand; but the paper soon dropped on her lap, and she seemed gazing into infinity.  The people passing and repassing were invisible to her.  She was away in that lonely island home, with two dark-haired babies lying near her, side by side.

Her husband looked at her over his newspaper, now and then; and observing her intense abstraction, he stepped softly across the room, and, laying his hand gently upon her head, said:  “Rosa, dear, do memories trouble you so much that you regret having returned to America?”

Without change of posture, she answered:  “It matters not where we are.  We must always carry ourselves with us.”  Then, as if reproaching herself for so cold a response to his kind inquiry, she looked up at him, and, kissing his hand, said:  “Dear Alfred!  Good angel of my life!  I do not deserve such a heart as yours.”

He had never seen such a melancholy expression in her eyes since the day she first encouraged him to hope for her affection.  He made no direct allusion to the subject of her thoughts, for the painful history of her early love was a theme they mutually avoided; but he sought, by the most assiduous tenderness, to chase away the gloomy phantoms that were taking possession of her soul.  In answer to his urgent entreaty that she would express to him unreservedly any wish she might form, she said, as if thinking aloud:  “Of course they buried poor Tulee among the negroes; but perhaps they buried the baby with Mr. and Mrs. Duroy, and inscribed something about him on the gravestone.”

“It is hardly probable,” he replied; “but if it would give you satisfaction to search, we will go to New Orleans.”