"Ever and ever your affectionate
"CORA."
The reader may, perhaps, guess the duty which called Cora Leslie from that festive party.
Deep in the bosom of that wood at Iberville, in which Gilbert Margrave and Augustus Horton had met some months before, Cora knelt with her lover beside the wooden cross, which alone marked the spot where the martyred Francilia lay.
Mournful were the tears which the freeborn Englishman and his betrothed bride wept upon the grave of the victim of slavery.
But the star of hope shone above the tomb and a prophetic whisper in the hearts of both, told of a day when the terrible institution which enables man to traffic in the body and soul of his fellow men, should be only a dark memory of the past.
Early next day a happy group stood upon the deck of a large steamer, which was speeding away from New Orleans.
Already the Queen City of the Mississippi was fading in the horizon, the white walls of villas, and the steeples of churches melting in the distance.
Cora Leslie stood with her arm linked in that of her father, and with her betrothed husband by her side.