I stood by her this time till I saw her in the ladies' dressing-room, by her request remaining between her and the object of her fears, who was at least fifteen feet from us, sitting in the farthest end of the cabin. After she had washed and combed her hair she asked, "How does my hair look? I never combed my hair myself. Our nurse did that always, until six months ago our last servant left us, I don't know if it looks well anyhow, for I don't know how to dress it. And do my eyes look as if I'd been crying?"
"Not to be noticed," I said. "You look all right."
"Will you see if that fellow has gone out?"
On the report that he had left she returned. I inquired if she was alone.
"O, no, not entirely; pa put me under the care of a splendid man; I reckon he's on deck; O, he's such a beautiful gentleman; he was pa's overseer a good many years; pa thought he couldn't carry on our plantation without him; when I see him I'll be all right. I reckon you've heard of my pa. Everybody knows him—Mr. Hampton—in Gloucester County, one of the most splendid counties in the State. Were you ever in Gloucester County?"
"I was there last week," I answered.
"Isn't it the most beautiful county you ever saw?"
I replied, "Nature has done enough to make it so."
"It was a grand county before the war," she said. "Everybody thinks it's the best county in the State of Virginia."
But my opinion widely differed from hers. It seemed to me one of the darkest and most God-forsaken corners of the earth. But the influence of slavery had its deleterious effects upon whites as well as blacks.