"I do not wish your marriage with James Harrington, and Ralph you can never hope for."
"You think so!" answered the girl, with a vicious sneer. "You fancy that one rebuff will crush me. I neither know nor care who told you that he has met my love with scorn, fled my presence as if I were a viper on his father's hearth. I tell you he shall return. I have a will that shall yet bend his love to mine though it were tougher than iron. Woman, I say again, Ralph Harrington shall yet be my lawfully wedded husband!"
"Girl, I tell you again, and with far better reasons, it can never be!" cried Zillah, towering over her as she sat upon the couch.
"It shall be!" almost hissed the girl, meeting the black eyes bent upon her with glances of sullen wrath.
"Not till the laws permit brothers and sisters to marry!" answered Zillah. "For I call upon the living God to witness that you are General Harrington's child!" Her face hardened and grew white, as the secret burst from her lips; for she saw the shudder and heard the shriek that broke from her child.
"His and yours?" questioned Agnes, pale as death.
"His and mine!"
"And you were a slave?"
"His slave."
Agnes started up, tossing her hands wildly in the air.