She had many servants; but Paul was not compelled to associate with them, and his duties were light, though menial.  When his mistress went out to walk, he must carry her spaniel in his arms.  He must stand behind her at dinner, wielding a fly-brush of peacock’s feathers.  He must run errands, and be equally ready to serve her whims and satisfy her wants.  She was not harsh, but very petulant; and had Paul been hasty or high-tempered, his lot might have been a bitter one.  On the contrary, he was quiet, docile, and bashful, and he pleased her marvellously.  If he sometimes wept for the happy past, or felt a child’s strong yearning for something to love, he hid his grief from those about him, and sought that consolation which the world cannot take away in the simple prayers he had conned from his mother.  He was a slave, but not a negro.  His pleasures were not theirs, for he had quick intelligence, and he shrank from their loud, lewd glee.  Their blood had thickened through generations of bondage, and trained in the harness of beasts, they had become creatures of draught.  His had rippled bright and brisk through generations of freedom, and a year could not drag him to their level.  He had learned to read and write, and it was his habit to stand at the window in his leisure moments, adding to his information from some pleasant book; but his mistress supposed that he was looking at the pictures merely, till one day, entering the dining-room softly, she heard him reading aloud.  He had a sweet, boy’s voice, which somewhat pacified the anger she felt at such presumption in a slave; and though at first rebuking him, she reconsidered the matter during the evening, and bade him read to her from a new novel.  Henceforward Paul gained favor, and his mistress found it convenient to employ him as an amanuensis.  She released him from menial duties, and gave him neat attire, and it was wonderful how well these accessories became him.  He was unassuming, as before, submitting with patience to his lot; and at length he became indispensable to Mrs. Everett.  Her attachment to books of fiction amounted to dissipation, and the part that he bore in their perusal filled his warm imagination till his fancies were brighter than romance—­they became poetry.  The one great grief of his life touched his whole face with a pensive melancholy, but he forebore to tell them his true history again, preferring to wait for some golden moment when he might be believed and emancipated.

From the beginning Mrs. Everett’s agent disliked him.  Wait was a Northern adventurer, cool, courageous, and ambitious, who had settled in the South with the resolution of becoming rich, and he had pursued his purpose with steady inflexibility.  He was not a bad man, but a bitter one, and Paul had in some sort divided Mrs. Everett’s esteem from him.  Previously he had been her sole and undisputed adviser, and as she was readily influenced, he hoped, in course of time, to be acceptable as her second husband.