Alfred R. King, when summoned home to Boston by the illness of his mother, had, by advice of physicians, immediately accompanied her to the South of France, and afterward to Egypt.  Finding little benefit from change of climate, and longing for familiar scenes and faces, she urged her son to return to New England, after a brief sojourn in Italy.  She was destined never again to see the home for which she yearned.  The worn-out garment of her soul was laid away under a flowery mound in Florence, and her son returned alone.  During the two years thus occupied, communication with the United States had been much interrupted, and his thoughts had been so absorbed by his dying mother, that the memory of that bright evening in New Orleans recurred less frequently than it would otherwise have done.  Still, the veiled picture remained in his soul, making the beauty of all other women seem dim.  As he recrossed the Atlantic, lonely and sad, a radiant vision of those two sisters sometimes came before his imagination with the distinctness of actual presence.  As he sat silently watching the white streak of foam in the wake of the vessel, he could see, as in a mirror, all the details of that flowery parlor; he could hear the continuous flow of the fountain in the garden, and the melodious tones of “Buena Notte, amato bene.”

Arrived in Boston, his first inquiry of the merchants was whether they had heard anything of Mr. Royal.  He received the news of his death with a whirl of emotions.  How he longed for tidings concerning the daughters!  But questions would of course be unavailing, since their existence was entirely unknown at the North.  That Mr. Royal had died insolvent, and his property had been disposed of at auction, filled him with alarm.  It instantly occurred to him how much power such circumstances would place in the hands of Mr. Fitzgerald.  The thought passed through his mind, “Would he marry Rosabella?” And he seemed to hear a repetition of the light, careless tones, “Of course not,—­she was a quadroon.”  His uneasiness was too strong to be restrained, and the second day after his arrival he started for New Orleans.

He found the store of his old friend occupied by strangers, who could only repeat what he had already heard.  He rode out to the house where he had passed that never-to-be-forgotten evening.  There all was painfully changed.  The purchasers had refurnished the house with tasteless gewgaws, and the spirit of gracefulness had vanished.  Their unmodulated voices grated on his ear, in contrast with the liquid softness of Rosabella’s tones, and the merry, musical tinkling of Floracita’s prattle.  All they could tell him was, that they heard the quadroons who used to be kept there by the gentleman that owned the house had gone to the North somewhere.  A pang shot through his soul as he asked himself whether they remembered his offer of assistance, and had gone in search of him.  He turned and looked back upon the house, as he had done that farewell morning, when he assured them that he would be a brother in time of need.  He could hardly believe that all the life and love and beauty which animated that home had vanished into utter darkness.  It seemed stranger than the changes of a dream.