“They were there once, Marie! but God and Claude smoothed them away.”

“I have no Claude,—­and no God, I think, at times.”

“No God, Marie!  Then how did you come hither?”

Marie was silent, reproved; and then passionately—­

“Why does He not right my people?”

That question was one to which Sabina’s little scheme of the universe had no answer; why should it, while many a scheme which pretends to be far vaster and more infallible has none as yet?

So she was silent, and sat with Marie’s head upon her bosom, caressing the black curls, till she had soothed her into sobbing exhaustion.

“There; lie there and rest:  you shall be my child, my poor Marie.  I have a fresh child every week; but I shall find plenty of room in my heart for you, my poor hunted deer.”

“You will keep my secret?”

“Why keep it?  No one need be ashamed of it here in free England.”

“But he—­he—­you do not know, Sabina!  Those Northerners, with all their boasts of freedom, shrink from us just as much as our own masters.”

“Oh, Marie, do not be so unjust to him!  He is too noble, and you must know it yourself.”

“Ay, if he stood alone; if he were even going to live in England; if he would let himself be himself; but public opinion,” sobbed the poor self-tormentor—­“It has been his God, Sabina, to be a leader of taste and fashion—­admired and complete—­the Crichton of Newport and Brooklyn.  And he could not bear scorn, the loss of society.  Why should he bear it for me?  If he had been one of the abolitionist party, it would have been different:  but he has no sympathy with them, good, narrow, pious people, or they with him:  he could not be satisfied in their society—­or I either, for I crave after it all as much as he—­wealth, luxury, art, brilliant company, admiration,—­oh, inconsistent wretch, that I am!  And that makes me love him all the more, and yet makes me so harsh to him, wickedly cruel, as I was to-day; because when I am reproving his weakness, I am reproving my own, and because I am angry with myself, I grow angry with him too—­envious of him, I do believe at moments, and all his success and luxury!”

And so poor Marie sobbed out her confused confession of that strange double nature which so many Quadroons seem to owe to their mixed blood; a strong side of deep feeling, ambition, energy, an intellect rather Greek in its rapidity than English in sturdiness; and withal a weak side, of instability, inconsistency, hasty passion, love of present enjoyment, sometimes, too, a tendency to untruth, which is the mark, not perhaps of the African specially, but of every enslaved race.

Consolation was all that Sabina could give.  It was too late to act.  Stangrave was gone, and week after week rolled by without a line from the wanderer.

CHAPTER X.

THE RECOGNITION.