Daddy Bob and Harry have come into the yard to ask Marston’s permission to join the party as boatmen.  They are in Aunt Rachel’s way, and she rushes past them, pushing them aside, and calling Mas’r to come and attend to their wants.  Marston comes forward, greets them with a familiar shake of the hand, granting their request without further ceremony.  Breakfast is ready; but, anxious for the amusement of the day, their appetites are despoiled.  Franconia, more lovely than ever, presenting that ease, elegance, and reserve of the southern lady, makes her appearance in the hall, is escorted to the table leaning on the arm of Maxwell.  Delicacy, sensitiveness, womanly character full of genial goodness, are traits with which the true southern lady is blessed:—­would she were blessed with another, an energy to work for the good of the enslaved!  Could she add that to the poetry of her nature, how much greater would be her charm-how much more fascinating that quiet current of thought with which she seems blessed!  There is a gentleness in her impulses—­a pensiveness in her smile—­a softness in her emotions—­a grace in her movements—­an ardent soul in her love!  She is gay and lightsome in her youth; she values her beauty, is capricious with her admirers, and yet becomes the most affectionate mother; she can level her frowns, play with the feelings, make her mercurial sympathy touching, knows the power of her smiles:  but once her feelings are enlisted, she is sincere and ardent in her responses.  If she cannot boast of the bright carnatic cheek, she can swell the painter’s ideal with her fine features, her classic face, the glow of her impassioned eyes.  But she seldom carries this fresh picture into the ordinary years of womanhood:  the bloom enlivening her face is but transient; she loses the freshness of girlhood, and in riper years, fades like a sensitive flower, withering, unhappy with herself, unadmired by others.

Franconia sat at the table, a pensiveness pervading her countenance that bespoke melancholy:  as she glanced inquiringly round, her eyes rested upon Lorenzo fixedly, as if she detected something in his manner at variance with his natural deportment.  She addressed him; but his cold reply only excited her more:  she resolved upon knowing the cause ere they embarked.  Breakfast was scarcely over before the guests of the party from the neighbouring plantations began to assemble in the veranda, leaving their servants in charge of the viands grouped together upon the grass, under a clump of oaks a few rods from the mansion.  Soon the merry-makers, about forty in number, old and young, their servants following, repaired to the landing, where a long barge, surrounded by brakes and water-lilies, presented another picture.

“Him all straight, Mas’r-him all straight, jus so!” said Daddy Bob, as he strode off ahead, singing “Dis is de way to de jim crack corn.”