When she became old enough she followed her mother’s callin’ of nursin’ the sick, and it seemed indeed as if her slight hands held the gift of healin’ in them, so successful wuz she.
Guarded by her mother as daintily as if she wuz the daughter of a queen, she grew up to womanhood as innocent as Eve wuz when the garden wuz new.
She turned away almost in disgust from the attention of young men, white or colored.
But about a year before I went to Belle Fanchon she had met her king. And to her, truly, Victor wuz a crowned monarch. And the love that sprung up in both their hearts the moment they looked in each other’s eyes wuz as high and pure and ideal an attachment as wuz ever felt by man or woman.
Victor wuz the son of a white man and a colored woman, but he showed the trace of his mother’s ancestry as little as did Genieve.
His mother wuz a handsome mulatto woman, the nurse and constant attendant of the wife of Col. Seybert, whose handsome place, Seybert Court, could jest be seen from the veranda of Belle Fanchon.
Col. Seybert owned this plantation, but he had been abroad with his family many years, and in the States further South, where he also owned property.
He had come back to Seybert Court only a few months before Thomas J. bought Belle Fanchon.
Mrs. Seybert wuz a good woman, and in a long illness she had soon after her marriage she had been nursed so faithfully by Phyllis, Victor’s mother, that she had become greatly attached to her; and Phyllis and her only child, Victor, had attended the Colonel and his wife in all their wanderings. Indeed, Mrs. Seybert often said and felt, Heaven knows, that she could not live if Phyllis left her.
And Victor wuz his mother’s idol, and to be near her and give her comfort wuz one of the reasons why he endured his hard life with Col. Seybert.