Poor Iola!  When she said slavery was not a bad thing, little did she think that she was destined to drink to its bitter dregs the cup she was so ready to press to the lips of others.

“How do you think she will take to her situation?” asked Camille.

“O, I guess,” said Bastine, “she will sulk and take it pretty hard at first; but if she is managed right she will soon get over it.  Give her plenty of jewelry, fine clothes, and an easy time.”

“All this business must be conducted with the utmost secrecy and speed.  Her mother could not have written to her, for she has been suffering with brain fever and nervous prostration since Leroy’s death.  Lorraine knows her market value too well, and is too shrewd to let so much property pass out of his hands without making an effort to retain it.”

“Has she any brothers or sisters?”

“Yes, a brother,” replied Bastine; “but he is at another school, and I have no orders from Lorraine in reference to him.  If I can get the girl I am willing to let well enough alone.  I dread the interview with the principal more than anything else.  I am afraid he will hem and haw, and have his doubts.  Perhaps, when he sees my letters and hears my story, I can pull the wool over his eyes.”

“But, Louis, this is a pitiful piece of business.  I should hate to be engaged in it.”

A deep flush of shame overspread for a moment the face of Lorraine’s attorney, as he replied:  “I don’t like the job, but I have undertaken it, and must go through with it.”

“I see no ‘must’ about it.  Were I in your place I would wash my hands of the whole business.”

“I can’t afford it,” was Bastine’s hard, business-like reply.  On the next morning after this conversation between these two young men, Louis Bastine presented himself to the principal of the academy, with the request that Iola be permitted to leave immediately to attend the sick-bed of her father, who was dangerously ill.  The principal hesitated, but while he was deliberating, a telegram, purporting to come from Iola’s mother, summoned Iola to her father’s bedside without delay.  The principal, set at rest in regard to the truthfulness of the dispatch, not only permitted but expedited her departure.

Iola and Bastine took the earliest train, and traveled without pausing until they reached a large hotel in a Southern city.  There they were obliged to wait a few hours until they could resume their journey, the train having failed to make connection.  Iola sat in a large, lonely parlor, waiting for the servant to show her to a private room.  She had never known a great sorrow.  Never before had the shadows of death mingled with the sunshine of her life.

Anxious, travel-worn, and heavy-hearted, she sat in an easy chair, with nothing to divert her from the grief and anxiety which rendered every delay a source of painful anxiety.