"And what if I do remind you! what would you do with me?" asked Cora. "Would you send me to your plantation to labor beneath the burning sun, and die before my time, worn out with superhuman toil? No! sell me rather. You may thus repair your ruined fortunes. Are you aware that one of your creditors, Augustus Horton, offered, not an hour ago, the fifty thousand dollars that you owe him as the price of your daughter's honor?"
"Oh, Heaven!" exclaimed Gerald Leslie; "all this is too terrible!" and flinging himself upon his knees at Cora's feet, he clasped her hands passionately in his own. "Cora, Cora, have pity upon me! What would you ask of me? What would you have me to do? My crime is the crime of all. Is the punishment to fall upon me alone? Am I alone to suffer? I, who have sacrificed my honor—yes, Cora, my honor as a colonist—to the claim of paternal love. Do you know that every citizen in New Orleans would blame and ridicule me for my devotion to you? Do you know that I am even amenable to the laws of Louisiana for having dared to educate your mind and enlighten your understanding? See, I am on my knees at your feet. I, your father, humiliate myself to the very dust! Do not accuse me; in mercy, do not accuse me!"
Cora's beautiful face was pale as ashes, her large dark eyes distended, but tearless.
"Upon my knees, beside my mother's grave," she said, solemnly, "I will ask her spirit if I can forgive you."
She released herself from her father's grasp, and hurried into the house before he could arrest her. The planter rose from the ground and looked mournfully after his daughter, but he did not attempt to follow her.
Later in the evening Gerald Leslie returned to New Orleans, and spent the long hours of the night alone in his solitary office face to face with ruin and despair.
The one crime of his youth had risen to torture his remorseful soul—ghastly and horrible shadow, it pursued the sinner in every place; it appeared at every moment. Repentance only could lay the phantom at rest, and he was now only learning to repent.
He had never before looked upon his conduct to the beautiful quadroon, Francilia, in the light of a crime. What had he done which was not done every day by others? What was she, lovely and innocent being as she was, but a slave—his property—bought with his sordid gold—his to destroy as he pleased?
Her melancholy death he looked upon as an unhappy accident, for which he himself was in no way responsible. That crime rested upon Silas Craig's overburdened soul.
Gerald Leslie utterly forgot that had he not been heartless enough to sell the mother of his only child, this cruel fate would never have been hers.