Marie stood as one petrified.  She seemed a statue of fear and despair.  She tried to speak, reached out her hand as if she were groping in the dark, turned pale as death as if all the blood in her veins had receded to her heart, and, with one heart-rending cry of bitter agony, she fell senseless to the floor.  Her servants, to whom she had been so kind in her days of prosperity, bent pityingly over her, chafed her cold hands, and did what they could to restore her to consciousness.  For awhile she was stricken with brain fever, and her life seemed trembling on its frailest cord.

Gracie was like one perfectly dazed.  When not watching by her mother’s bedside she wandered aimlessly about the house, growing thinner day by day.  A slow fever was consuming her life.  Faithfully and carefully Mammy Liza watched over her, and did all she could to bring smiles to her lips and light to her fading eyes, but all in vain.  Her only interest in life was to sit where she could watch her mother as she tossed to and fro in delirium, and to wonder what had brought the change in her once happy home.  Finally she, too, was stricken with brain fever, which intervened as a mercy between her and the great sorrow that was overshadowing her young life.  Tears would fill the servants’ eyes as they saw the dear child drifting from them like a lovely vision, too bright for earth’s dull cares and weary, wasting pain.

CHAPTER XII.

SCHOOL-GIRL NOTIONS.

During Iola’s stay in the North she found a strong tide of opposition against slavery.  Arguments against the institution had entered the Church and made legislative halls the arenas of fierce debate.  The subject had become part of the social converse of the fireside, and had enlisted the best brain and heart of the country.  Anti-slavery discussions were pervading the strongest literature and claiming, a place on the most popular platforms.

Iola, being a Southern girl and a slave-holder’s daughter, always defended slavery when it was under discussion.

“Slavery can’t be wrong,” she would say, “for my father is a slave-holder, and my mother is as good to our servants as she can be.  My father often tells her that she spoils them, and lets them run over her.  I never saw my father strike one of them.  I love my mammy as much as I do my own mother, and I believe she loves us just as if we were her own children.  When we are sick I am sure that she could not do anything more for us than she does.”

“But, Iola,” responded one of her school friends, “after all, they are not free.  Would you be satisfied to have the most beautiful home, the costliest jewels, or the most elegant wardrobe if you were a slave?”

“Oh, the cases are not parallel.  Our slaves do not want their freedom.  They would not take it if we gave it to them.”

“That is not the case with them all.  My father has seen men who have encountered almost incredible hardships to get their freedom.  Iola, did you ever attend an anti-slavery meeting?”