“Give me a few days to think the matter over. We’ll talk of it when I haven’t so much on my mind. Meanwhile I’ll tell you what I will consent to: Josephine shall be yours to do with just as you please.”
“Come, that’s something,” said the wife. “What I ask, then, is, that you convey Josephine to Mr. Winslow to hold in trust for me. Will you do this the first thing in the morning?”
“I certainly will,” replied Ratcliff, flattering himself that his ready compliance with one of his wife’s morbid whims would more than content her for his evasion of the other.
“Well, then, good night,” said she, pointing to the door.
She submitted, with a slight shudder, imperceptible to Ratcliff, to be kissed by him, and he went down-stairs. Josephine issued from behind a screen whither the wife had beckoned her to go on his first coming in. If there had been any remnant of affection for him in the quadroon’s heart, she was well cured of it by what she had heard.
The invalid called for writing materials, and penned a note. “Take this, Josephine,” she said, “early to-morrow to Mr. Winslow. In it I simply tell him of Ratcliff’s proposition in regard to yourself, and ask him, the moment that affair is attended to, to come and see me.”
The clock was striking twelve the next day when Mr. Winslow came, and Josephine ushered him into the invalid’s presence.
“You may leave us alone for a while, Josephine,” she said.
As soon as the quadroon had gone out and shut the door, the invalid motioned to Winslow to draw near. He was upwards of seventy, tall and erect, with venerable gray locks, and an expression of face at once brisk and gentle, benevolent and keen.
“What’s the state of the property you still hold for me, Mr Winslow?”