After the departure of Jaspar she had retired to the gallery which surrounds the cabin, to enjoy the freshness of the evening air.  The gallery was somewhat crowded, and, with a lady and gentleman, she had ascended to the hurricane deck.  Her companions, more gay and happy than she, soon left her to the gloom and comparative silence which usually reigns on the upper deck.  There were no other passengers there, and, fearing not the darkness or the loneliness, she was there venting the sadness which pervaded her heart.  She was about to descend, when she recognized Henry.

Emily related to him the circumstances of her father’s death, and of the reading of the will.

“Impossible!” exclaimed Henry, in astonishment.

“It is strange; but I cannot see any reason to disbelieve it, except that my father’s character assures me it is not so.”

“Which would be a very good reason for disbelieving it.  And you are now on your way to Cincinnati?”

“I am; and it is the most melancholy journey I ever attempted.  But I ought to be thankful for all that comes,—­if I am a slave, for the freedom that awaits me.”

“Good Heavens!  Emily, do not talk so!  You freeze the blood in my veins!”

“Nay, I feel somewhat reconciled to the terrible reality now, for it little matters what I really am, since the will—­true or false—­condemns me to the odium of having been a slave.  You will not wish now to own your sister!” said Emily, with a sad smile.

“Yes, were you ten times a slave, it would not obliterate the mark of the omniscient God!  It could not alter the beauty of the features or the character.  I should be proud of such a sister, even did she wear the shackles.  But you!  No, no, there is no stain upon your birth!”

“And can you regard me as you once did?  A—­”

“An angel.  Yes, truly, as an angel of the higher order.”

“Nay, nay, this sounds not like the Henry Carroll of a month since.  You are a flatterer,” said Emily, with a smile.

“I did but say what I would have gladly said then,” replied Henry.

The fear of ingratitude to a father no longer chained his heart to the narrow limit of friendship.  He saw her before him trodden down by misfortune, in the power of subtlety and villany, and as a child of misfortune his heart even more strongly inclined to her.  He loved her more tenderly than before.

“Then, when sorrow was a stranger, you were subdued and distant to your sister,” said Emily, her heart fluttering with the storm of emotion within it.

“I am as I was then; but you were a child of affluence, and I feared to—­to—­”

“Why did you fear?” asked Emily, not waiting to hear the word Henry was stammering to enunciate.  “Had you no confidence in your sister?”

“I did have confidence in the sister.  But I fear it was not a sister’s confidence I sought.”

“Indeed!” said Emily, her emotions destroying the appearance of surprise the word was intended to convey.