He lifted her flaccid form from the posture in which she had thrown herself,—lifted and supported it against his breast as if to give her the full assurance of safety and protection. She opened her eyes upon him as thus they stood,—eyes now beaming with reverential gratitude and transport. He looked at them closely.
“Yes,” said he, “there they are! the blue and the gray! Why did I not notice them before?”
“Ah!” she cried. “Here is my dream fulfilled. You have at last taken from them that letter which lay there.”
There was the sound of footsteps on the landing in the upper hall. Clara instinctively threw an arm over Vance’s shoulder. The key of the chamber-door was turned, and Ratcliff entered.
He had been pacing the piazza and smoking uncounted cigars. The distant music, which to Clara’s aroused senses had been so audible, had not been heard by him. He had not dreamed of any interruption of his plans. Was he not dealing with a slave in a house occupied by slaves? What possible service was there he could not claim of a slave? Were not slaves made every day to scourge slaves, even their own wives and children, till the backs of the sufferers were seamed and bloody? Besides, he had fortified the fidelity of one of them—of Agnes—by presents and by flatteries. Even the revolver he usually carried with him was laid aside in one of the drawers of his dressing-room as not likely to be wanted.
On entering the chamber, Ratcliff, before perceiving that there was an unexpected occupant, turned and relocked the door on the inside.
Was it some vision, the product of an incantation, that now rose before his eyes? For there stood the maiden on whose compliance he had so wreaked all the energy of his tyrannical will,—his own purchased slave and thrall,—creature bound to serve either his brute desires or his most menial exactions,—there she stood, in the attitude of entire trust and affection, folded in the arms of a man!
Instantly Ratcliff reflected that he was unarmed, and he turned and unlocked the door to rush down-stairs after his revolver. But Vance was too swift for him. Placing Clara in a chair, quick as the tiger-cat springs on his prey, he darted upon Ratcliff, and before the latter could pass out on to the landing, relocked the door and took the key. Then dragging him into the middle of the room, he held him by a terrible grip on the shoulders at arm’s length, face to face.
“Now look at me well,” said Vance. “You have seen me before. Do you recognize me now?”
Wild with a rage to which all other experiences of wrath were as a zephyr to a tornado, Ratcliff yet had the curiosity to look, and that look brought in a new emotion which made even his wrath subordinate. For the first time in more than twenty years he recognized the man who had once offended him at the theatre,—who had once knocked him down on board a steamboat in the eyes of neighbors and vassals,—who had robbed him of one beautiful slave girl, and was now robbing him of another. Yes, it never once occurred to Ratcliff that he, a South Carolinian, a man born to command, was not the aggrieved and injured party!