Tulee wondered why her vivacious little pet had all of a sudden become so sedentary in her habits,—­why she never took her customary rambles except when Mr. Fitzgerald was gone, and even then never without her sister.  The conjecture she formed was not very far amiss, for Chloe’s gossip had made her better acquainted with the character of her master than were the other inmates of the cottage; but the extraordinary industry was a mystery to her.  One evening, when she found Floracita alone in her room at dusk, leaning her head on her hand and gazing out of the window dreamily, she put her hand on the silky head and said, “Is my little one homesick?”

“I have no home to be sick for,” she replied, sadly.

“Is she lovesick then?”

“I have no lover,” she replied, in the same desponding tone.

“What is it, then, my pet?  Tell Tulee.”

“I wish I could go to Madame Guirlande,” responded Flora.  “She was so kind to us in our first troubles.”

“It would do you good to make her a visit,” said Tulee, “and I should think you might manage to do it somehow.”

“No.  Gerald said, a good while ago, that it would be dangerous for us ever to go to New Orleans.”

“Does he expect to keep you here always?” asked Tulee.  “He might just as well keep you in a prison, little bird.”

“O, what’s the use of talking, Tulee!” exclaimed she, impatiently.  “I have no friends to go to, and I must stay here.”  But, reproaching herself for rejecting the sympathy so tenderly offered, she rose and kissed the black cheek as she added, “Good Tulee! kind Tulee!  I am a little homesick; but I shall feel better in the morning.”

The next afternoon Gerald and Rosa invited her to join them in a drive round the island.  She declined, saying the box that was soon to be sent to Madame was not quite full, and she wanted to finish some more articles to put in it.  But she felt a longing for the fresh air, and the intense blue glory of the sky made the house seem prison-like.  As soon as they were gone, she took down her straw hat and passed out, swinging it by the strings.  She stopped on the lawn to gather some flame-colored buds from a Pyrus Japonica, and, fastening them in the ribbons as she went, she walked toward her old familiar haunts in the woods.

It was early in February, but the warm sunshine brought out a delicious aroma from the firs, and golden garlands of the wild jasmine, fragrant as heliotrope, were winding round the evergreen thickets, and swinging in flowery festoons from the trees.  Melancholy as she felt when she started from the cottage, her elastic nature was incapable of resisting the glory of the sky, the beauty of the earth, the music of the birds, and the invigorating breath of the ocean, intensified as they all were by a joyful sense of security and freedom, growing out of the constraint that had lately been put upon her movements.  She tripped along faster, carolling as she went an old-fashioned song that her father used to be often humming:—­