“‘It is well,’ she responded.  I had spoken satirically, and expected to see her shrink under it, but she answered with perfect coolness and sang froid.  I continued, ’You will not deny that you are a negro, at least a mulatto.’

“‘Pardon me, madam,’ she replied; ’my father is a mulatto, my mother was an Englishwoman.  Thus, to give you accurate information upon the subject, I am a quadroon.’

“‘Quadroon be it!’ I answered, angrily again, I fear.  ’Quadroon, mulatto, or negro, it is all one.  I have no desire to split hairs of definition.  You could not be more obnoxious were you black as Erebus.  I have no farther words to pass upon the past or the present, but something to say of the future.  You hold in your hands a letter—­a love-letter, I am sure—­a declaration, as I fear—­from my nephew, Mr. Surrey.  You will oblige me by at once sitting down, writing a peremptory and unqualified refusal to his proposal, if he has made you one,—­a refusal that will admit of no hope and no double interpretation,—­and give it into my keeping before I leave this room.’

“When I first alluded to Willie’s letter she had crimsoned, but before I closed she was so white I should have thought her fainting, but for the fire in her eyes.  However, she spoke up clear enough when she said, ’And what, madam, if I deny your right to dictate any action whatever to me, however insignificant, and utterly refuse to obey your command?’

“‘At your peril do so,’ I exclaimed.  ’Refuse, and I will write the whole shameful story, with my own comments; and you may judge for yourself of the effect it will produce.’

“At that she smiled,—­an indescribable sort of smile,—­and shut her fingers on the letter she held,—­I could not help thinking as though it were a human hand.  ’Very well, madam, write it.  He has already told me’—­

“‘That he loves you,’ I broke in.  ’Do you think he would continue to do so if he knew what you are?’

“‘He knows me as well now,’ she answered, ’as he will after reading any letter of yours.’

“‘Incredible!’ I exclaimed.  ’When he wrote you that, he did not know, he could not have known, your birth, your race, the taint in your blood.  I will never believe it.’

“‘No,’ she said, ’I did not say he did.  I said he knew me; so well, I think, judging from this,’—­clasping his letter with the same curious pressure I had before noticed,—­’that you could scarcely enlighten him farther.  He knows my heart, and soul, and brain,—­as I said, he knows me.’

“‘O, yes,’ I answered,—­or rather sneered, for I was uncontrollably indignant through all this,—­’if you mean that, very likely.  I am not talking lovers’ metaphysics, but practical common-sense.  He does not know the one thing at present essential for him to know; and he will abandon you, spurn you,—­his love turned to scorn, his passion to contempt,—­when he reads what I shall write him if you refuse to do what I demand!’