"On his return from Europe, Mr. Leslie found her tranquil, and apparently resigned; but the glance of those mournful black eyes became an eternal reproach, which irritated and tormented him. He sent her to work on the plantation; but for some reason or other, go where he would, he was always meeting her, always encountering the same melancholy look, which seemed to ask him for her child. At last he could endure it no longer. He sold her."
"Oh, Heaven!" exclaimed Cora.
"He sold her to a man of the name of Craig—a bad man—who, under the mask of a sanctimonious life, concealed the base heart of a profligate and a villain. He thought, on purchasing the slave, that he would succeed her late master in her good graces; but finding that he could obtain nothing by persuasion, he would have had recourse to violence, when Francilia seized a knife and buried its blade in her heart."
"Oh, my mother, my murdered mother!"
"A negro belonging to this Craig stole the knife, which he gave to me. I have it still."
Cora sank on her knees, the tears streaming from her eyes, her clasped hands uplifted to Heaven.
"Alas, beloved mother!" she cried, "martyr to the base and cruel laws of this accursed land, it is after fifteen years that your daughter learns your unhappy fate; after fifteen years that she weeps for your memory!"
CHAPTER IX.
THE DAUGHTER'S ACCUSATION.
Neither Cora nor Toby was aware that there had been a listener during the latter part of their conversation; but it was not less a fact. Gerald Leslie had returned unobserved by either of the excited speakers, and, arrested by the passionate gestures of the mulatto slave, had lingered in the background, anxious to discover the cause of his agitation.