As Marie sang the anxiety faded from her face, a sense of security stole over her, and she sat among her loved ones a happy wife and mother.  What if no one recognized her on that lonely plantation!  Her world was, nevertheless, there.  The love and devotion of her husband brightened every avenue of her life, while her children filled her home with music, mirth, and sunshine.

Marie had undertaken their education, but she could not give them the culture which comes from the attrition of thought, and from contact with the ideas of others.  Since her school-days she had read extensively and thought much, and in solitude her thoughts had ripened.  But for her children there were no companions except the young slaves of the plantation, and she dreaded the effect of such intercourse upon their lives and characters.

Leroy had always been especially careful to conceal from his children the knowledge of their connection with the negro race.  To Marie this silence was oppressive.

One day she said to him, “I see no other way of finishing the education of these children than by sending them to some Northern school.”

“I have come,” said Leroy, “to the same conclusion.  We had better take Iola and Harry North and make arrangements for them to spend several years in being educated.  Riches take wings to themselves and fly away, but a good education is an investment on which the law can place no attachment.  As there is a possibility of their origin being discovered, I will find a teacher to whom I can confide our story, and upon whom I can enjoin secrecy.  I want them well fitted for any emergency in life.  When I discover for what they have the most aptitude I will give them especial training in that direction.”

A troubled look passed over the face of Marie, as she hesitatingly said:  “I am so afraid that you will regret our marriage when you fully realize the complications it brings.”

“No, no,” said Leroy, tenderly, “it is not that I regret our marriage, or feel the least disdain for our children on account of the blood in their veins; but I do not wish them to grow up under the contracting influence of this race prejudice.  I do not wish them to feel that they have been born under a proscription from which no valor can redeem them, nor that any social advancement or individual development can wipe off the ban which clings to them.  No, Marie, let them go North, learn all they can, aspire all they may.  The painful knowledge will come all too soon.  Do not forestall it.  I want them simply to grow up as other children; not being patronized by friends nor disdained by foes.”

“My dear husband, you may be perfectly right, but are you not preparing our children for a fearful awakening?  Are you not acting on the plan, ‘After me the deluge?’”

“Not at all, Marie.  I want our children to grow up without having their self-respect crushed in the bud.  You know that the North is not free from racial prejudice.”