"Yes, were you ten times a slave, it would not obliterate the mark of the omniscient God! It could not alter the beauty of the features or the character. I should be proud of such a sister, even did she wear the shackles. But you! No, no, there is no stain upon your birth!"
"And can you regard me as you once did? A—"
"An angel. Yes, truly, as an angel of the higher order."
"Nay, nay, this sounds not like the Henry Carroll of a month since. You are a flatterer," said Emily, with a smile.
"I did but say what I would have gladly said then," replied Henry.
The fear of ingratitude to a father no longer chained his heart to the narrow limit of friendship. He saw her before him trodden down by misfortune, in the power of subtlety and villany, and as a child of misfortune his heart even more strongly inclined to her. He loved her more tenderly than before.
"Then, when sorrow was a stranger, you were subdued and distant to your sister," said Emily, her heart fluttering with the storm of emotion within it.
"I am as I was then; but you were a child of affluence, and I feared to—to—"
"Why did you fear?" asked Emily, not waiting to hear the word Henry was stammering to enunciate. "Had you no confidence in your sister?"
"I did have confidence in the sister. But I fear it was not a sister's confidence I sought."