‘Then come to my arms!’ he exclaimed, as he rose and held them out to her. She was hesitating just a little, not entirely from coyness, but because it is so sweet to dally with our happiness—when a low murmuring sound, like the first menacing tones of thunder, or the moaning of a sleuthhound when it finds the trail, which evidently proceeded from the negroes’ quarters, made them start asunder, and change colour.
‘What was that?’ demanded Lizzie, under her breath, as Hugh Norris threw his arm round her for protection.
‘It is the groaning of a crowd,’ he answered. ‘It is the first note of mutiny. Lizzie, there is something wrong! For God’s sake, let me take you away from this.’
But she struggled to free herself.
‘If they are rising, Hugh, let me go to them! No one understands them as I do! Let me speak, and they will obey me! I can do with them as I like.’
But before he had time to put into words his entreaty that she would resign herself to his protection, a piercing shriek seemed to rend the evening air, and the next minute Rosa, the yellow girl, rushed into the room, with Maraquita’s infant in her arms.
‘Oh, Missy Liz,’ she cried, ‘what have they done to my baby? Dis crowd of niggers is all cryin’ out for dere rights, and down with de planters, and I coming along, and dey pulled de poor baby from my arms, and hit it on de head with a stone. Oh, Missy Liz, I couldn’t help it! I screamed to dem to leave my poor baby alone! But dey call out ’tis Missy Quita’s chile and Massa Courcelles’, and den dey strike it again. And the baby’s berry sick, Missy Liz—berry sick, indeed,’ continued Rosa, weeping, and rocking the bundle in her arms.
‘Give it to me,’ said Lizzie calmly, though her face was deathly white, but not so white as that of Maraquita’s infant, which lay calm and peaceful in the sleep of death, with a discoloured bruise upon its little forehead, where the cruel stone had struck it.
‘She is dead!’ said Lizzie solemnly, as she placed the body on the table. She did not shed a tear as she did so, but Hugh Norris, looking up at her, marked the deep lines which suppressed emotion had drawn upon her forehead, and thought he had never seen her look so stern before.
‘My poor little Mary,’ she said, in a low voice, as she gazed upon the infant’s dead form. ‘This is the first-fruits of the Beauregard rebellion, Hugh! They have risen at last, and they will not stop here! What will become of them all at the White House?’