purpose, and changed the theme.  Something troubled her, he knew; and when he applied himself to conciliate and cheer her, at those moments she suffered most.  Had she loved the stern, ambitious man whose closed chamber still chilled her mansion?  Was it because she was childless, and travelling graveward?  Or did she cherish a mother’s feeling for Paul, and wish that he was of her race, and worthy to be her son?  Toward each of these theories he inclined, favoring the last, and finally he concluded that she did not love, but feared him.  He had grown tall and manly.  An individual beauty, rather of mind than of face, developed in him, and his mistress had been prodigal of favors, so that his dress and ornaments corresponded with his person.  He might have ruled, rather than served in her dwelling; but content with the recognition of his equality, he maintained the same modest guise, and his mistress felt an uneasy pride in his promotion.  One day he found her weeping, and when he spoke she answered bitterly: 

“Paul, you have ceased to love me; you are ungrateful; you wish to be free—­you would leave me!”

He responded pleasantly—­for he had become familiar with such moods—­that he had found a new romance which he would read.  It was not a long story, but a thrilling one, and based upon the simple narrative of Joseph in bondage.  The outline was true, the details were fabulous, and the old lady marvelled that a theme so trite could be so well embellished.  He read far into the night, and she bade him leave the book upon her table, that she might peruse it again.

“It is manuscript,” he said, “and this is the only copy.”

“Why, Paul,” she said, “how came you by it?”

“I wrote it myself.”

Paul was indeed the author, having filled in the sorrows of his hero from his own experiences.  Mrs. Everett was loud in its praises; she was sure that it indicated genius, and she lay awake that night meditating an act of charity and of justice.  She would make a free man of Paul, and he should find in far lands that equality which he could not obtain in his own.  They would journey together.  He should have means and advantages, and become her protege and heir.  But the strong self-love defeated this resolve.  If Paul were not bound to her by law, he might forsake her, and she could not bear to lose him, for he had become a part of her heart; but when she broached the matter, Paul gave his parole never to leave her without consent.

He was still a slave, with the taint of a trampled race in his blood, and he said nothing to Mrs. Everett of his origin.  They crossed the seas; they dwelt in pleasant places, beneath soft skies; and Paul grew in knowledge.  But his patron was still harassed by some deep remorse.  She hurried him from city to city like the fabled apostate, and at length fell sick in London, on the eve of their return to America.  Paul gleaned from her ravings in delirium the cause