“Dey calls you pore, honey,” she said softly, “but wen I sees dat bright gole watch and chain I knows better.  Now I reckon dey would bring enough bright silver dollars at a juglar’s shop to buy my ole man twice over agin!  He is but porely, and our chilluns is all dead and gone, anyway, all but one, way down in New Orleans, an’ ef I could git his free papers he might come here and jine his wife in freedom, even if Massa Jack Dillard did heir masta’s estate.  How much would dat watch and chain be worth, honey?”

“Two or three hundred dollars, I suppose, I don’t know exactly; but certainly enough to buy your old man at Southerners’ value set upon aged negroes; but whether it be or not—­”

An apparition, of which I fortunately caught the reflection in the glass before me, cut short the promise that hovered on my lips.  It was that of Mrs. Clayton, in her bed-gown and swathed in flannel, peering, peeping, listening at the door of her chamber, as unlovely a vision, certainly, as ever broke up an entretien or dissolved a delusion.

I maintained my self-possession, though my agitation was extreme (the crisis had seemed so favorable!), while she limped forward and accosted me civilly, with a demand as peremptory as a highwayman’s for my watch and chain, of which I took no notice.

“I should be doing you great injustice in your condition,” she added, coolly, “to let you sell your watch, even to benefit Dinah and her old man, benevolent as is your motive; so I must take possession of it, or send for Dr. Englehart to do so, whichever you prefer.”

“The watch is there,” I said, rising haughtily, with my still unadjusted hair falling about me.  “It was my father’s and is precious to me far beyond its intrinsic value; and I shall hold you accountable for it some day.  Take it at once, though, rather than recall the person before me with whose presence you menace me.  Keep it yourself, however; I would rather deal with you than the others, false as you have shown yourself to every promise.”

“I wish you would be reasonable,” she said, “and do what your friends ask of you.  This confinement is wearing us both out; it will be the death of me, and you will be to blame.”

“The sooner the better,” I rejoined, heartlessly.

“Ah, Miss Monfort, you have no better friend than I am, perhaps, but you are ungrateful.”

“I hope not; but some things of late have shaken, I confess, what little faith I had in you; this confiscation of my property is one of them.”

“You know why this is done; I need not explain, but I shall trust you fearlessly in Dinah’s society in future.  I believe you have no other treasure to bribe her with,” and, smiling in her sardonic way, she turned and limped to her bedroom, which it had cost her so great an effort to leave.  Her groans and moans during the remainder of the evening were piteous, and Dinah could do nothing to comfort her.  A sudden determination possessed me.  My own system recuperated rapidly, and after a nervous headache I was always conscious of renewed vital power and of keener sensations.  I would try the experiment once more—­hazarded under circumstances so different that it made me tremulous but to think of the vast abyss between my now and then—­and essay, to magnetize Mrs. Clayton.