I should have died.  She followed me down to the borders of the grave, and won me back to life and health.  I was slow in recovering and, during the time, I had ample space for reflection, and the past unrolled itself before me.  I resolved, over the wreck and ruin of my past life, to build a better and brighter future.  Marie had a voice of remarkable sweetness, although it lacked culture.  Often when I was nervous and restless I would have her sing some of those weird and plaintive melodies which she had learned from the plantation negroes.  Sometimes I encouraged her to talk, and I was surprised at the native vigor of her intellect.  By degrees I became acquainted with her history.  She was all alone in the world.  She had no recollection of her father, but remembered being torn from her mother while clinging to her dress.  The trader who bought her mother did not wish to buy her.  She remembered having a brother, with whom she used to play, but she had been separated from him also, and since then had lost all trace of them.  After she was sold from her mother she became the property of an excellent old lady, who seems to have been very careful to imbue her mind with good principles; a woman who loved purity, not only for her own daughters, but also for the defenseless girls in her home.  I believe it was the lady’s intention to have freed Marie at her death, but she died suddenly, and, the estate being involved, she was sold with it and fell into the hands of my agent.  I became deeply interested in her when I heard her story, and began to pity her.”

“And I suppose love sprang from pity.”

“I not only pitied her, but I learned to respect her.  I had met with beautiful women in the halls of wealth and fashion, both at home and abroad, but there was something in her different from all my experience of womanhood.”

“I should think so,” said Lorraine, with a sneer; “but I should like to know what it was.”

“It was something such as I have seen in old cathedrals, lighting up the beauty of a saintly face.  A light which the poet tells was never seen on land or sea.  I thought of this beautiful and defenseless girl adrift in the power of a reckless man, who, with all the advantages of wealth and education, had trailed his manhood in the dust, and she, with simple, childlike faith in the Unseen, seemed to be so good and pure that she commanded my respect and won my heart.  In her presence every base and unholy passion died, subdued by the supremacy of her virtue.”

“Why, Eugene, what has come over you?  Talking of the virtue of these quadroon girls!  You have lived so long in the North and abroad, that you seem to have lost the cue of our Southern life.  Don’t you know that these beautiful girls have been the curse of our homes?  You have no idea of the hearts which are wrung by their presence.”

“But, Alfred, suppose it is so.  Are they to blame for it?  What can any woman do when she is placed in the hands of an irresponsible master; when she knows that resistance is vain?  Yes, Alfred, I agree with you, these women are the bane of our Southern civilization; but they are the victims and we are the criminals.”