"You here, Miss Barker!" she said with cold dignity; "I have always held this room sacred from all, but my own family."
"I come by invitation," answered Agnes, meekly. "Yesterday afternoon you left a message with my nurse, desiring that I should seek you before entering upon my duties again. This command brought me here, not a wish to intrude."
Mrs. Harrington arose, walked feebly back to the little breakfast-table, and taking up a small teapot of frosted silver, poured some strong tea into a cup which she drank off clear. Then moving back her chair, she sat down, evidently struggling for composure.
"I remember," she said very quietly, for Mabel had controlled herself, "I remember leaving this message with a woman who called you her mistress."
Agnes smiled. "Oh, yes, our Southern nurses always claim us in some form. 'My mammy,' I think she must have called herself that. Every child has its slave mammy at the South."
"Then you are from the South, Miss Barker?"
"Did not General Harrington tell you this, madam?"
"I do not recollect it, if he did," answered Mabel, searching the girl's face with her clear eyes; "in truth, Miss Barker, I made so few inquiries when you entered my family, that your very presence in it is almost a mystery to me. General Harrington told me you were well educated, and an orphan. I found that he was correct in the latter point, but was somewhat astonished yesterday afternoon to hear the woman whom I met, claim you as her mistress."
"You do not understand our Southern ways, Mrs. Harrington, or this would not appear so singular. With us the tie between a slave nurse and her child, is never broken."
"Then this woman is a slave?" questioned Mabel.