But now the consequences of his crime had overtaken him in a manner he had never dreamed of; Cora, his beloved, his idolized child, accused and cursed him as the murderer of her mother.
It was too horrible.
He dared not remain at the summer pavilion. He dared not meet the reproachful glances of those eyes which appeared to him as the ghostly orbs of the late Francilia. No, alone in his office, surrounded only by the evidences of commerce, and the intricate calculations of trade, he endeavored to forget that he had a daughter, and a daughter who no longer loved him.
And where all this time was Cora? With the Venetian shutters of her apartment closed; with the light of day excluded from her luxurious apartment, she lay with her head buried in the satin cushions of her couch, weeping for the mother whose mournful face she could scarcely recall—weeping for the father whose youthful sins she so lately learned.
Bitter, bitter were the thoughts of the young girl, whose life had heretofore been one long summer sunshine.
She, the courted, the caressed, the admired beauty of a London season—she was a slave—an Octoroon—a few drops only of the African race were enough to taint her nature and change the whole current of her life.
Her father loved her, but he dared only love her in secret. The proud colonists would have laughed aloud at the planter's affection for his half-caste daughter. And he, too, Gilbert Margrave, the poet painter; he, whose every glance and every word had breathed of admiration, almost touching upon the borders of love; would doubtless ere long know all; and he, too, oh, bitter misery, would despise and loathe her.
Oh, thank Heaven, the unhappy girl wronged the noble nature of the English heart! She knew not that to the Briton there is no such word as slavery. She knew not that in a free country the lowest laborer in the fields has as full a right to law and justice as the proudest noble in the land.