“There, that am something like Massa Ross,” and the negress tied the gold in a corner of her handkerchief, and thrust it into her bosom. “Yes, he was there a long time.”
“Well,” interrupted Ross, evidently getting impatient, “tell me all that passed, word for word; do not forget a look or a syllable—and another gold piece is ready when you have done.”
And the negress, thus stimulated, told him all. That scene of tender anguish—the struggle of love and pride which she had witnessed in the sick chamber—all was related; and oh! how its exquisite pathos, its touching dignity was desecrated by the vulgar mind and coarse speech of that slave woman!
Ross listened to it all, his face changing with every sentence; for, with only that coarse witness, he did not think it necessary to control his features with the dissimulation that had become a habit. He listened, and as he felt, thus the evil man looked. When the woman ceased speaking the exultation of a fiend was in the smile that curled his lip.
“And he was determined—spite of her caresses, spite of her tears. I knew that it would be so. He is not a man to waver, having once taken a resolution—but the child, Louisa? I have recommended a woman up the river to take charge of it, but you, my good Louisa, must still be its nurse. It seems a feeble little thing; do you not think so, Louisa?”
“Feeble! Lor a massa! No; it’s the best-natured, healthy little thing I ever see,” was the reply, and Louisa agitated her palm-leaf fan with considerable violence.
“But away from you, Louisa, with some one less kind, it may become sickly in a very little time, you know.”
“Sure enough!” and Louisa half suspended the action of her fan, as she fell into a fit of profound contemplation.
“With you to give it medicine and superintend, if it were ill, I should feel quite safe,” said Ross, and a strange, fiendish smile crept over his lips. “Of course, I should come and see you very often.”
“Oh! you would. Well, den, I haven’t nothing to say against going with the baby.”