"Come; the reporters will soon be here. Let us go and see after Marguerite."
They found her in the room of the janitress, shut in and fast asleep.
"Do you think," one asked of the janitress, "that mere fright and the loss of that comb made this strong girl ill?"
"No. I think she must have guessed those men's errand, and her eye met the eye of some one who knew her."
"But what of that?"
"She is 'colored.'"
"Impossible!"
"I tell you, yes!"
"Why, I thought her as pure German as her name."
"No, the mixture is there; though the only trace of it is on her lips. Her mother—she is dead now—was a beautiful quadroon. A German sea-captain loved her. The law stood between them. He opened a vein in his arm, forced in some of her blood, went to court, swore he had African blood, got his license, and married her. Marguerite is engaged to be married to a white man, a gentleman who does not know this. It was like life and death, so to speak, for her not to let those men turn her out of here."