Rosabella noticed it, and, looking up, said, “What troubles you, dear friend?”

“O, this is a world of trouble,” replied Madame, “and you have had such a storm beating on your young heads, that I wonder you keep your senses.”

“I don’t know as we could,” said Rosa, “if the good God had not given us such a friend as you.”

“If any new trouble should come, I trust you will try to keep up brave hearts, my children,” rejoined Madame.

“I don’t know of any new trouble that can come to us now,” said Rosa, “unless you should be taken from us, as our father was.  It seems as if everything else had happened that could happen.”

“O, there are worse things than having me die,” replied Madame.

Floracita had paused with her thread half drawn through her work, and was looking earnestly at the troubled countenance of their friend.  “Madame,” exclaimed she, “something has happened.  What is it?”

“I will tell you,” said Madame, “if you will promise not to scream or faint, and will try to keep your wits collected, so as to help me think what is best to be done.”

They promised; and, watching her countenance with an expression of wonder and anxiety, they waited to hear what she had to communicate.  “My dear children,” said she, “I have heard something that will distress you very much.  Something neither you nor I ever suspected.  Your mother was a slave.”

“Our mother a slave!” exclaimed Rosa, coloring vehemently. “Whose slave could she be, when she was Papasito’s wife, and he loved her so?  It is impossible, Madame.”

“Your father bought her when she was very young, my dear; but I know very well that no wife was ever loved better than she was.”

“But she always lived with her own father till she married papa,” said Floracita.  “How then could she be his slave?”

“Her father got into trouble about money, my dear; and he sold her.”

“Our Grandpapa Gonsalez sold his daughter!” exclaimed Rosa.  “How incredible!  Dear friend, I wonder you can believe such things.”

“The world is full of strange things, my child,—­stranger than anything you ever read in story-books.”

“If she was only Papasito’s slave,” said Flora, “I don’t think Mamita found that any great hardship.”

“She did not, my dear.  I don’t suppose she ever thought of it; but a great misfortune has grown out of it.”

“What is it?” they both asked at once.

Their friend hesitated.  “Remember, you have promised to be calm,” said she.  “I presume you don’t know that, by the laws of Louisiana, ’the child follows the condition of the mother.’  The consequence is, that you are slaves, and your father’s creditors claim a right to sell you.”

Rosabella turned very pale, and the hand with which she clutched a chair trembled violently.  But she held her head erect, and her look and tone were very proud, as she exclaimed, “We become slaves!  I will die rather.”