Declining a polite invitation to dine, he walked back to the city.  The impression on his mind had been so vivid, that, as he walked, there rose ever before him a vision of that graceful arch with waving vines, the undulating flight of the silver-breasted doves, and the airy motions of that beautiful child.  How would his interest in the scene have deepened, could some sibyl have foretold to him how closely the Fates had interwoven the destinies of himself and that lovely little one!

When he entered the counting-room, he found his employer in close conversation with Mr. Grossman, a wealthy cotton-broker.  This man was but little more than thirty years of age, but the predominance of animal propensities was stamped upon his countenance with more distinctness than is usual with sensualists of twice his age.  The oil of a thousand hams seemed oozing through his pimpled cheeks; his small gray eyes were set in his head like the eyes of a pig; his mouth had the expression of a satyr; and his nose seemed perpetually sniffing the savory prophecy of food.  When the clerk had delivered his message, he slapped him familiarly on the shoulder, and said,—­

“So you’ve been out to Duncan’s, have you?  Pretty nest there at Pine Grove, and they say he’s got a rare bird in it; but he keeps her so close, that I could never catch sight of her.  Perhaps you got a peep, eh?”

“I saw a very beautiful child of Mr. Duncan’s,” replied Alfred, “but I did not see his wife.”

“That’s very likely,” rejoined Grossman; “because he never had any wife.”

“He said the little girl was his daughter, and I naturally inferred that he had a wife,” replied Alfred.

“That don’t follow of course, my gosling,” said the cotton-broker.  “You’re green, young man!  You’re green!  I swear, I’d give a good deal to get sight of Duncan’s wench.  She must be devilish handsome, or he wouldn’t keep her so close.”

Alfred Noble had always felt an instinctive antipathy to this man, who was often letting fall some remark that jarred harshly with his romantic ideas of women,—­something that seemed to insult the memories of a beloved mother and sister gone to the spirit-world.  But he had never liked him less than at this moment; for the sly wink of his eye, and the expressive leer that accompanied his coarse words, were very disagreeable things to be associated with that charming vision of the circling doves and the innocent child.

SCENE II.

Time passed away, and with it the average share of changing events.  Alfred Noble became junior partner in the counting-house he had entered as clerk, and not long afterward the elder partner died.  Left thus to rely upon his own energy and enterprise, the young man gradually extended his business, and seemed in a fair way to realize his favorite dream of making a fortune and returning to the North to marry.  The subject of Slavery was then seldom discussed.