Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Published Semi-Monthly

128 Pages.]

[Complete.

BEADLE’S

The Choicest Works of the Most Popular Authors.

MYRA

THE

CHILD OF ADOPTION.

BY MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.

New York:

IRWIN P. BEADLE & CO., 141 WILLIAM ST.

Ross & Tousey, General Agents.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the Year 1860,

by Irwin P. Beadle & Co., in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

BEADLE’S DIME NOVELS, No. 9.

THE SLAVE SCULPTOR;
OR, THE PROPHETESS OF THE SECRET CHAMBERS.

MYRA MEETING HER MOTHER.

MYRA:
THE
CHILD OF ADOPTION.
A
ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE.

BY MRS. ANN S. STEPHENS.

NEW YORK:

IRWIN P. BEADLE AND COMPANY,

141 William St., corner of Fulton.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the Year 1860, by

IRWIN P. BEADLE & CO.,

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

Pudney & Russell, Printers,

79 John Street, N. Y.

MYRA,

THE

CHILD OF ADOPTION.

CHAPTER I.
MOTHER AND CHILD.

“One look upon thy face ere thou depart!

My daughter! it is soon to let thee go!

My daughter! with thy birth has gushed a spring

I knew not of—filling my heart with tears,

And turning with strange tenderness to thee—

A love, O God! it seems so—that must flow

Far as thou fleest, and wrap my soul and thee.

Henceforth thy love must be a yearning charm

Drawing me after thee. And so farewell!”—Willis.

The windows were all open, but shaded fold after fold with muslin transparent as dew drops, and snowy as the drifts of a summer cloud. The floor was spread with East India matting, and in a corner of a chamber stood a couch shaded with clouds of delicate lace and clad in snow white even to the floor—a great easy chair, covered with chaste dimity, stood close by the bed, and further off a miniature couch, snow white also, save where the soft rose tints of an inner curtain, light and silken, broke through the waves of snowy gossamer that flowed over it. Upon the pillow of this pretty couch lay a bouquet of flowers tied loosely by an azure-colored ribbon, and more beautiful still a sleeping infant, with one tiny hand resting like a torn peach-blossom, on its little bosom and its sweet lips parted smilingly, as a bud uncloses to the warm sunbeam. There, in its snowy nest, with the fragrant flowers sending their breath in and out through the misty draperies, and half smothered in delicate lace, lay the beautiful infant; and a little way off, upon the larger couch reposed another being in the first bud and bloom of womanly beauty, not asleep, but with her large eyes wandering tenderly toward the infant, and from that to a bouquet of orange-blossoms and moss-roses that, feebly clasped in her delicate fingers, was yet falling apart and dropping its blossoms over the counterpane.

An air of gentle languor lay upon this young creature, and there was something more than that affectionate tenderness with which a mother regards her young child, in the look that she, from time to time, cast upon the slumbering infant—a shade of sadness, that but for her feeble state, might have taken the strength of passionate regret, seemed ready to break from her eyes in a flood of tears, whenever they dwelt longer than usual upon the babe. But when her grief was ready to break forth, she would allow her eyes to droop toward the flowers that seemed to have some pleasant association connected with their fragrance, and a sweet smile—not the less sweet that there was sadness in it—would part her lips while a faint sigh floated through them.

All at once the infant began to nestle in its crib, and opening its large brown eyes, turned them upon the recumbent female. As if her tears lay so near the surface as to require only this motion to set them flowing, the young mother, as she encountered the infantile glance, shuddered faintly, and large drops gathered in her eyes, and fell one by one over her full but pale cheeks.

“I must not look at it, I must not learn to love it so,” she murmured, turning her head away, and shading her tearful eyes with one hand. “Ah! why should I, a mother so young, and with a husband like him, always find every feeling, every impulse shackled as it springs from my heart? Why was there no one to shield my youth from the blight, that I feel, too surely, will cling around me to the end?”

The infant began to cry, and there came into the room a colored woman, tall and with that superb luxuriance of form that so frequently characterizes the dusky-hued woman of the South. She approached the crib and took the child in her arms, hushing it with a sort of cajoling attempt at tenderness, that seemed to annoy the young mother not a little.

“Give the babe to me!” she said, feebly reaching forth her arms.

“Better not, better not, missus,” replied the woman, pressing her full lips upon the velvet cheek resting on her bosom—a most unnatural pillow, as the unhappy mother felt all too keenly. “Nurse said last night that young missus must be kept quiet, and the baby not left to fret her so much.”

“Fret me! my child fret me! Give it to me, I say,” cried the young mother so passionately that the color broke over her pale cheek, like the abrupt opening of a rose-bud. “It is cruel, it is unkind, thus to keep a babe from its mother’s bosom. He never ordered it. I know well enough it is not his wish that I should be tortured in this manner.”

“Take the child to its mother. Why do you hesitate in obeying your mistress?” cried a firm and manly voice from the door; and with his lofty step somewhat subdued, a gentleman entered the chamber, whose air of authority awed the negress at once. He approached the young female, who had started eagerly up from her pillow, with every manifestation of deep tenderness in her voice and manner.

“Have you been waiting for me, Zulima?” he said, bending down to kiss the fair forehead of his wife. “I was kept longer than usual at the counting-house this morning.”

“Oh! I knew that you would be here soon,” replied the young wife, taking his hand between both hers, and kissing it with a degree of passionate tenderness that thrilled through her feeble frame, till, in her weak state, excess of feeling became almost painful.

“What! because I scattered my path to your bedside with the flowers you have been wasting?” was the smiling reply.

“They were welcome and very sweet, for they told me that you were soon to follow,” said the young wife, gathering the scattered flowers together with her hand. “See! your little daughter has kept hers in better condition. She is not old enough to tear her flowers to pieces the moment they come within reach!”

“Like her mother, ha! Zulima!” said the gentleman, shaking his head, but smiling fondly all the time. “She must have more patience and less pride than her mother, this pretty child—or she will be”—

“As unfortunate and as unhappy as her mother has been,” said the young wife, and her eyes filled with tears.

“I only hope she will be as lovely and as innocent, whatever her lot may prove, and as truly beloved, Zulima,” he added, after a moment’s pause; and with an expression of deep feeling, mingled with a shade of sadness, the proud husband gazed upon his wife and child till the tears clouded his own fine eyes.

For a moment there was silence between the husband and wife. Both were gazing upon the infant, and both were occupied with thoughts where pain and tenderness were almost equally blended. Pride, stern and lofty pride, tinged the sweet current of his reflections, and she—impulsive young creature—thought of nothing but her sufferings, her passionate love for him, and of the beautiful child she was sheltering upon her bosom with one fairy arm, from which she had impatiently flung back the loose sleeve of her night-dress, as if detesting the delicate lawn for coming between her and that little form.

“You will not send her away!” said the young creature, lifting her eyes to the face of her husband, which was becoming more and more thoughtful each moment. “Ah! if you knew how much I love her!”

“I know—I know, Zulima,” said the husband, interrupting the beautiful pleader with an accent which, though not unkind, told how the slightest opposition chafed his proud nature. “It is natural. You must love the child; who could help it? but do you not love me better?—do you not love its future fame? its father’s fame?—your own reputation, well enough to relinquish her for a time?”

“I have thought of it all—I know what the world will say of me—but I cannot give her up—indeed, indeed I cannot.” The young mother rose in the bed, and with her child folded to her bosom with one arm, cast the other round the proud man’s neck, and drew his face down till it touched the infant, as she covered his forehead with kisses. “You will keep us both—you will not take our child from me!”

“Zulima, it must be,” said the husband, drawing gently back, and freeing himself from her fond embrace, while his fine features bespoke the terrible pain which it cost him to be firm. “While the man who has once claimed you for his wife remains unpunished, I cannot acknowledge you mine, legally, innocently mine, as in the sight of Heaven you are.”

“I do not ask it. Let the world think of me as it likes. I will submit to reproach—to suspicion—any thing—but leave my child—never!”

“Zulima!” was the firm and almost reproachful reply; “do you think that your reputation is separate from mine? Shall I cast a stain upon my wife which no after time can efface, and then produce her, wronged and sullied, to society? Listen to me, Zulima; cease weeping and listen! The man is yet alive who has called you wife”—

“I know—I know!” cried the poor young creature, shuddering from head to foot, and burying her face in the pillows; “Oh say no more! I will give up the child—but spare me that subject!”

“No, Zulima. Let us speak of it this once, and then it shall be banished our lips forever. Think you that it is not painful to me as to you?”

How painful it was might be guessed by the colorless cheeks and the quivering of that proud man’s lips while he was speaking.

“While a mere child you became the dupe and victim of this vile man, De Grainges. He wronged your confidence, wronged your love”—

“No, no! I did not love him—I was a child—I knew not what love was!” broke in passionate murmurs from the pillow where Zulima’s face was buried. “Do not say I loved that man!”

“My poor wife! I know that you did not love him. I know quite as well that you do love me. Look up, sweet child! I would give worlds that I could speak of all this without distressing you thus. Bear with me only a minute longer. My only wish is to reconcile you, if possible, to the inevitable.”

“I will listen,” replied the tortured young mother.

“I know, Zulima, that you were deceived by this bad man—that he wedded you while his wife was living, and that you fled from his home the moment this truth was made known. Of all this I was thoroughly convinced before you became my wife; but until this man is convicted in open court and before the whole world, how can I convince society of that which to me is a sacred truth? how, before the fact of his previous marriage is thus publicly substantiated, can I proclaim the union which has made me more than happy? Zulima, I am a proud man—sensitive to public opinion—careful of my standing in the world. Were a breath of suspicion to rest upon the fame of my wife, I should never be happy again. You are young—supposed to be unmarried—living here under the roof of my dearest friend, who, with one exception, is alone in my confidence. In a few months this man, now in prison, will receive the punishment of his crime. Do you not see the peril of keeping this child with you till after that event enables me to claim my wife before the world? Zulima! look up—say that you forgive me the pain I am causing—say, that, for my sake, you will submit to have this little one sent from you for a season—only for a season.”

Subdued and touched to the heart by the depth of feeling with which this appeal was made, Zulima arose from the pillow where she had been striving to subdue her grief, and taking the infant in her trembling arms, motioned her husband to receive it. The moment she was relieved from the sweet burden, the young creature fell back, and closing her eyes, tried to check the grief that, however suppressed, still clamored at her heart. It was all in vain: the tears gushed like shattered diamonds though the thick and silky lashes, and she grasped the counterpane nervously with one hand, in a terrible strife to force back the agony that was choking her. Poor young mother! she felt with that keen intuition, which is like a prophecy, that she was not parting from her child for a season, but forever.

“You consent, Zulima? You will give up our little one with no anger, and without all this bitter grief?” cried the strong man, pale as death, and bending over the young mother, with the child pressed to his bosom.

“I will, I do,” burst from those pale and trembling lips.

The husband turned away; his limbs trembled, his eyes were blinded with moisture, and the weight of that little babe seemed to bend and sway his strong frame, as if he had been a reed. He looked back upon the mother. There she lay, the wet eyelids closed and quivering—her white lips pressed together, and so pale, that but for the agitation of her features she might have seemed stricken dead in the midst of her anguish. He returned to the couch.

“Zulima, would you kiss the babe before it goes!”

“I dare not—I dare not,” broke from those pale lips; then Zulima held back her sobs, for his footsteps were departing—a door closed—husband and child both were gone. Then the mother’s anguish broke forth, her arms were flung upward, her quivering hands clasped wildly together—a moment and they fell heavily upon the orange flowers that still littered the bed, crushing them in her utter insensibility.

Then, while the young wife lay so pale and deathly there stole toward the bed that negro woman, who bent down till the bright Madras ’kerchief turbaning her forehead mingled with the chestnut tresses that lay scattered over the shoulder and bosom of the sufferer. She listened a moment, as if to make herself quite certain that what seemed so deathly was not death itself, and then glided from the chamber.

The negress stole softly through the open hall, and into a spacious garden; a row of small white buildings stood at the farther extremity, gleaming in snowy patches through the vines and trees that embowered that portion of the garden. These were the slave-dwellings belonging to a rich plantation some three miles from New Orleans—belonging to the husband of Zulima, and occupied for a season by his bosom friend that the infancy of his child might be honorably sheltered. And here in a little whitewashed room of the slave dwelling this bosom friend was impatiently watching the approach of the female slave whom he had placed—a dark spy—in the bed-chamber of that helpless young wife. With his face close to one of the four panes of glass that admitted light to the humble room, he watched the fiery colors of the Madras turban, which the woman always wore, as it glided like some gorgeous bird through the thick foliage, nearer and nearer to the den where he had for two hours been waiting for news from the sick-chamber. The slave entered her dwelling, and sat down before her master, full of that consequential assumption that a little power is certain to call forth in one of her ignorant and degraded class.

“Well, Louisa,” said the master, with a show of careless indifference, for he was of a cool and subtle temperament, with passions slow and calculating, but all the more grasping for the deliberation, with which, like well-trained hounds, they were let free from the leash of his strong will; “Well, Louisa, how is the lady this morning?”

“Oh, she am about de same, Massa Ross—no danger of her going off dis bout anyhow,” replied the negress, turning her head on one side and moving a palm-leaf fan before her face, with an air of self-conceit that made her auditor smile, spite of his preoccupation.

“She just had a little fainting spell when I come out, but it won’t last long—no danger!”

“Has she had any visitors this morning—has he been there, Louisa?”

“Dar, now, you ask me dat, Massa Ross, just as if he didn’t come ebery morning of him life.”

“Then he has been there,” rejoined the man, “and left her fainting. Tell me, Louisa,—oh here is the Napoleon that I promised.”

“There, that am something like Massa Ross,” and the negress tied the gold in a corner of her handkerchief, and thrust it into her bosom. “Yes, he was there a long time.”

“Well,” interrupted Ross, evidently getting impatient, “tell me all that passed, word for word; do not forget a look or a syllable—and another gold piece is ready when you have done.”

And the negress, thus stimulated, told him all. That scene of tender anguish—the struggle of love and pride which she had witnessed in the sick chamber—all was related; and oh! how its exquisite pathos, its touching dignity was desecrated by the vulgar mind and coarse speech of that slave woman!

Ross listened to it all, his face changing with every sentence; for, with only that coarse witness, he did not think it necessary to control his features with the dissimulation that had become a habit. He listened, and as he felt, thus the evil man looked. When the woman ceased speaking the exultation of a fiend was in the smile that curled his lip.

“And he was determined—spite of her caresses, spite of her tears. I knew that it would be so. He is not a man to waver, having once taken a resolution—but the child, Louisa? I have recommended a woman up the river to take charge of it, but you, my good Louisa, must still be its nurse. It seems a feeble little thing; do you not think so, Louisa?”

“Feeble! Lor a massa! No; it’s the best-natured, healthy little thing I ever see,” was the reply, and Louisa agitated her palm-leaf fan with considerable violence.

“But away from you, Louisa, with some one less kind, it may become sickly in a very little time, you know.”

“Sure enough!” and Louisa half suspended the action of her fan, as she fell into a fit of profound contemplation.

“With you to give it medicine and superintend, if it were ill, I should feel quite safe,” said Ross, and a strange, fiendish smile crept over his lips. “Of course, I should come and see you very often.”

“Oh! you would. Well, den, I haven’t nothing to say against going with the baby.”

“Wherever I send you, Louisa?”

“Well, yes, I don’t care, if it isn’t so far off that you can’t come once a week or so to see us, Massa Ross; but I won’t go far, now I tell you.”

“Well, now, go to your charge. I will see you again to-morrow.”

The negress arose, and with an insolent twist of her head to the left shoulder, stood in the door-way fanning herself.

“Well,” said Ross, impatiently, “well, what are you waiting for now!”

“Dis piece of gold in my bosom, Massa Ross,” and the negress placed a plump ebony hand upon her heart. “It is ’gun beginning to feel lonesome.”

“Oh! I had forgotten; here, here.”

Louisa drew forth the pocket handkerchief, which, from its embroidery and exquisite lace, must have been purloined from her mistress, and a second Napoleon was nested in her bosom.

“Stop,” said Ross, as she was going out; “You said that the lady was fainting—that he took the child forth in his arms. Where is it now?”

“How should I know? I s’pose he took the baby to your wife. She was in the back parlor, and he turned that way.”

“There he is now. Go back into the room, Louisa, go back!” Ross seized his hat as he spoke, and leaving the slave-house, wound through a grove of fruit trees that sheltered him from sight, and taking a serpentine path, came leisurely forth into that part of the garden, where he had seen Mr. Clark. The proud man was walking hurriedly forward, his arms folded, and one white aristocratic hand thrust into the bosom of his black dress. He was very pale, and his finely cut features bore traces of great internal anguish. He saw Ross, and turned quickly toward him.

“It is over, my friend; it is all over,” he said, grasping the hand which Ross extended, and wringing it hard. A smile, full of proud anguish, broke the firm and classical beauty of his mouth, and his eyes spoke volumes of suffering.

“What is over? what has happened?” inquired Ross, startled and turning almost as white as his friend.

“My wife! my child!”

“What of them? what has happened to them, my friend?”

“Nothing but that which was inevitable. But Zulima, my poor, poor wife! It would wring your heart to see how she suffers from the separation from her child.”

“But the child; is it yet with her?”

“Hark!” said the other, lifting his hand. “Do you not hear?”

It was the sound of a carriage driving rapidly from the house. Mr. Clark seemed listening to the sound as if his life was departing with it—fainter and fainter from his bosom. There was something in his countenance which Ross dared not disturb, though his soul was burning with curiosity to know why the common sound of carriage-wheels grinding through the gravelly soil should so profoundly agitate his benefactor. The sound grew distant, and died away before another word was spoken, then Mr. Clark turned toward his false friend, his nerves hitherto drawn to their most rigid tension relaxed, and his eye met the gaze with which Ross was curiously regarding him with an appeal for sympathy, that would have touched a heart for stone.

“It is gone!” he said, in a broken voice. “My child is gone!”

“Your child gone? when, where?” cried Ross, fearfully excited. “Surely you have not sent the infant from its mother so abruptly—and—and without consulting—I mean without informing your best friend.”

“That carriage—you heard it—bore away Zulima’s child!” said the unhappy father, mournfully.

“But where has it gone? With whom is it placed?”

“It is placed with one whom I have long known, the noble and childless wife of an old and dear friend. Myra will be to them as an own child, till I claim her again.”

“And may I not know the people, and the place?” inquired the false friend. “The child of my benefactor is dear to me as my own.”

“I have pledged myself to secrecy in this. It was the desire of my friend,” repeated Mr. Clark; “but for that you should know every thing. All this concealment will soon be over; a few weeks and this man must be sentenced. Then wife and child shall take possession of their home before the world. In this you can help me. I can not well appear in person to press forward this man’s conviction, but you, my friend, will use every effort to relieve me from this painful position. My poor wife scarcely suffers more than I do!”

“I will do every thing that you desire. Indeed, the commonest gratitude should insure that,” said Ross, pressing his patron’s hand, but with restless and nervous haste in his manner. “Shall I set out for the city at once?”

“No, no; seek your wife first; tell her to comfort my poor Zulima. I can not see her now; without wishing to reproach me, she could not help it. I tell you, Ross, I would rather encounter a squadron of armed men, than the look of those soft eyes, as they followed her child this morning, when I took it from her. It was the glance of a wounded fawn, as we have often seen it, turned upon the hunter.”

“I will see my wife at once,” replied Ross, unable with all his duplicity to conquer the disappointment that was consuming him; “then I will depart for the city, and make a strong effort to bring De Grainges to his trial.”

“It is strange,” said Mr. Clark; “but some influence that I can not fathom seems to keep back this man’s sentence. The court, as if it were trifling with his case only to perpetuate my troubles, keeps putting off his sentence from day to day with cruel pertinacity. But now I am resolved that it shall be more prompt; this hidden influence must and shall be revealed.”

Ross listened to the first portion of this speech with a cold and crafty smile playing and deepening about his mouth, but at the close this smile died away, and with it every vestige of color—his eyes wandered rapidly from object to object, avoiding the face of his benefactor, and when Mr. Clark would have spoken again, he forgot all the habitual deference of his manner and interrupted him.

“Have no trouble about this man, De Grainges; I will attend to him at once. The cause of this unaccountable delay in the court shall be ascertained and remedied. Now that I see how deeply your happiness is involved, no effort shall be wanting on my part to bring the trial to an issue. To this end, I must start for the city at once.”

Ross held out his hand, and grasped that of his patron.

“Accomplish this for me, Ross, and no being ever lived more grateful than I shall be,” said the generous man. “I depend on you.”

“You may, most positively,” was the emphatic reply; and wringing the hand he held, Ross left the garden. He met a servant in the hall, and accosted him with the sharp command to have a horse saddled. Then, passing into the inner room, he spoke a few hasty words, not to his wife, but to the black woman, Louisa, and then hurried to the stable.

With the sluggish habits of his race, the negro was lazily dragging forth a saddle from its repository, when his master came up booted, and with a riding whip in his hand.

“Walk quick, you scoundrel!” he said, laying the whip over the sleek negro with a force that made the old fellow start into something resembling haste; but even this unheardof activity did not satisfy the master; he snatched the saddle, flung it over the horse, and set his teeth firmly together, as he buckled the girth. Sharply ordering the man out of his way, he sprang upon the horse and dashed toward the city, at first in a light canter; but the moment he was out of sight, the high-spirited animal was put to the top of his speed, and horse and man flew like lightning along the road.

At each turn of the road, Ross would lean forward on his saddle and take a new survey of the distance, muttering his disappointment in half-gasped sentences, as he sped along.

“Oh, if I could but overtake the carriage before it reaches the city! A single glimpse of it might be enough—nothing should take me from the track; nothing, nothing. Ha! that is it—no, only a sugar-cart. Why did I let him keep me? I must, I will know who these people are—no, no, I am foiled at last!”

This exclamation was followed by a sharp check to the horse, who was still bounding forward at the top of his speed. The city lay before him; but along the winding highway, over which his eye ran like lightning, there was no carriage at all resembling the one that Louisa had described to him as that which had borne her young charge away.

At a slow pace, but with his horse reeking with the effects of his former hot speed, Ross rode into the city. He took a circuitous route, to his own counting-house, and held a long consultation with a young man whom he found there. This lasted several hours; and then the two walked arm-in-arm toward the city prison.

Through the gloomy labyrinths of this prison the two men made their way, conversing together in low voices; a turnkey went before them, humming a tune to himself, and sometimes raising an accompaniment by playfully dashing a huge iron key, which he held in one hand, against the door of some prisoner’s cell, smiling grimly as he heard the poor inmate spring forward, in the vain hope that some friend had come to break the gloom of his bondage. From time to time, the two visitors seemed to study this man’s face with close scrutiny; and as some new manifestation of character broke forth in his manner or his song, they would exchange glances that were full of meaning.

“Offer him gold!” whispered Ross to his companion; “say that is for his trouble; we can judge something by the manner in which he receives it.”

“True,” was the emphatic but whispered reply, “it will be a sure test.”

The officer paused at the entrance of a cell, and placed his key in the lock. “This is De Grainges’ cell, gentlemen; how long will you wish to stay with him?”

“We may wish to remain so long that you will suffer some inconvenience,” said Ross’s companion, dropping his hand into a pocket with that easy grace which renders the most singular acts of some men perfectly natural in their seeming. “Here is something to repay the trouble we may occasion.”

The turnkey reached forth his hand eagerly for the silver coin which he supposed the stranger was about to offer him, but when he saw a bright piece of gold glittering in his palm, the sudden joy of his heart broke with a sort of gloating ferocity over his face, and with a low chuckle he folded his other hand over the gold, and began to rub the palms together, with the coin between them in a warm clasp, as if he thought thus to infuse some portion of the precious metal into his own person.

Ross and his companion had stepped within the cell, and thus, clouded with semi-darkness themselves, watched the man, whose face was fully revealed in the broadly-lighted corridor.

“It will do,” whispered Ross, smiling, “it will do.”

“Yes,” said the other thoughtfully; “he is one of those who would sell his soul for money.”

The man said this with the air of one who reflected sadly upon the infirmities of human nature, and really felt shocked at the gross cupidity that himself had tempted; and so it was. He did not reflect that he himself was there for no purpose on earth, but to barter his own soul for the very yellow dross, only in a larger amount; that he was ready to yield to this man’s bartered treachery; that all the difference between himself and the man he tempted, lay in the price which each set upon his integrity. But the great villain despised the lesser sincerely, and sighed that human nature could be so degraded. So it is all over the world. Those who shroud their crimes in purple and fine linen, ever do and ever will look down with benign contempt on those who fold lesser crimes scantily in poverty and rags; so scantily that the world sees them as they are, coarse, rude, and glaring.

Thus, shaking their heads and sighing over the degeneracy of the human heart, these two arch-villains entered the cell of De Grainges, the bigamist, leaving the officer without to gloat over his piece of gold.

A tall man, pale from confinement, and yet possessed of a certain air of languid elegance, sat within the cell writing. He looked up, as the two visitors entered, and regarded them with an expression of nervous surprise, but observing that they were gentlemen in appearance, arose courteously, and placed the chair, in which he had been sitting, for Ross. The cell contained but two seats, and the prisoner stood up with his arms folded, and leaning in a position that had much grace in it against the wall.

“You have come, gentlemen,” said the prisoner, in a low, sad voice—“you have doubtless come to tell me that the time of my sentence has arrived?”

“No,” said Ross; “that would be a painful task, and one from which we are happily saved. We come, as friends, to ask some questions regarding this singular case. Perhaps we may have the power—we certainly have the will—to serve you.”

“It is too late,” replied the prisoner, sadly. “My trial is over. Why they have not sentenced me before this is incomprehensible.”

“To you, perhaps, but not to us. You have strong friends outside; those who have done something in keeping back the sentence, and may do more—obtain, for instance, a new trial.”

“To what end?” questioned the prisoner. “I am guilty. I have confessed it. In the wild delirium of a passion that was never equaled in the heart of man, I married the most confiding and lovely creature that ever lived. The fraud was detected. My wife—my living wife forced herself into the home where I had sheltered my falsely-won bride. Zulima would not love the villain who had wronged her. She left me; and without her I care very little whether it is to a prison or a grave.”

“But what if Zulima loved you yet? What if she only desired that in this trial your right to her could be established?”

The prisoner shook his head.

“I only say,” continued Ross, “if this were the case; if a new trial were granted, if there was no lack of funds to pave the way through court, would you not, having a new trial, suppress the proofs of this former marriage? Might not your wife herself be persuaded to aid in clearing you?”

“No,” replied the prisoner, firmly. “It could not be. My wife pursues me with that strong hate which is born of baffled passion. Zulima ceased to love me.”

“Because she believed her marriage unlawful,” said Ross.

“It was unlawful. I have acknowledged it again and again. Zulima had nothing left—nothing but her freedom from the man that had wronged her to hope for. I would not deprive her of that.”

“And if the means were before you? If you could obtain a new trial, this first marriage, you are certain, would be proven against you?”

“I am very certain,” replied the prisoner.

“Remember, if they fail to prove the first marriage, you are free forever, and Zulima is your lawful wife. Is not this worth an effort?”

The unhappy man clasped his hands, and for a moment there broke through his sad eyes a luster that was perfectly dazzling.

“Worth an effort!” he said. “Oh, heavens! I would die but to see her look upon me again with love for a single moment.”

“Then why not make the effort?”

“Because I know that Zulima has ceased to love me. She is young, beautiful. I feel that she has brought me here, not for revenge, but that herself may attain honorable freedom. I would not raise my hand to thwart her in the just object.”

The two men looked anxiously at each other. They were astounded by the strange magnanimity of the prisoner.

“I tell you,” said Ross, earnestly “this thing can be brought about. Your counsel have seen the witnesses. Gold is a potent agent. Even your wife yields; she will not appear. You can be cleared of this charge; you can claim Zulima as your lawful wife. We pledge ourselves to accomplish all that we have proposed.”

“Gentlemen, you seem kind, and I thank you; but I know that the wrong which I inflicted on that young girl has been followed by her aversion; she has told me so. She is not my lawful wife; without her love—her firm, earnest love, I would not claim her if she were. All that she desires is freedom; that she shall have, though it cost my life instead of a few years’ imprisonment.”

Ross arose and went into the corridor, where he conversed in a low voice and very earnestly with the turnkey. Meantime the prisoner sat down in the empty chair, and burying his face in his hands, seemed to be lost in bitter thought. When Ross returned he arose and stood up, but his face was haggard, and he seemed to suffer much from the struggle that had been aroused in his breast.

“Then you are determined not to claim a new trial?”

“I am,” was the reply.

“Perhaps it is as well; but we are the friends of Zulima. She suffers, she shrinks from the thought of your imprisonment. This new appeal may be impossible, but there is another way. Your trial has done all for Zulima that can be accomplished; it sets her free. Now she would give that to you, which your self devotion will secure to her—freedom. To-night, De Grainges, the means of escape will be provided; at daybreak, to-morrow, a vessel sails for Europe; you must become one of her passengers.”

“And does she desire this?” asked the prisoner, aroused all at once from the stubborn resolve of self-sacrifice that had possessed him.

“She does; we are her messengers.”

“To-night—this is sudden! and she desires it? She deems the trial that has taken place sufficient for her emancipation from the hateful bonds that made her mine. You are certain of this?”

“Most certain.”

“And the means of escape?”

“Leave that to us. The time, midnight; be ready. That is all we desire of you.”

“I will be ready,” said the young man, falling into the chair which Ross had just left, and overcome with a sudden sense of freedom—freedom given by the woman whom he had so deeply wronged. His nerves, hitherto so firm, began to tremble, and covering his face with both hands, he burst into tears. When he looked up the two strangers had left the cell.

The next morning, when Ross entered his counting-room, he found the turnkey talking with his partner. Just then Mr. Clark entered also, but with a harassed and anxious expression of countenance.

“My friend,” said Ross, advancing toward him, “you have come at the right moment to hear this man’s news from his own lips. I fear it will give you pain. No, I had better tell it myself; he is a stranger, and knows nothing of your interest in the mother. Step this way, sir.”

“What is this? For what would you prepare me? Zulima—”

“Is well, and becoming reconciled to her loss; but De Grainges—”

“What of him, sir? what of that unhappy man?” inquired Mr. Clark, sternly.

“He has broken prison; he escaped last night.”

Mr. Clark staggered. The color left his lip, and he leaned heavily on the back of a chair. “My poor, poor wife! will her trials never have an end?” he exclaimed with deep feeling, and, turning hastily, he left the counting-room.

“It will be some time before he acknowledges her now,” said Ross, in a low voice, to his partner. “See how his step wavers.”

“That may waver, but his pride never will,” was the low reply.

“Never!” said Campbell.

And he was right. Poor, poor Zulima!

CHAPTER II.

Trifles, light as air,

Are, to the jealous, confirmations strong

As proofs of holy writ.—Othello.

It was spring-time in the South—that rich, bright season more luxurious in foliage and profuse in fragrance than our warm and mellow summers ever are. The orange-trees were all in flower; carnations blushed warm and glowing upon the garden banks; the grass was mottled with tiny blossoms, gorgeous and sweet as the air they breathed. All around the house which Zulima occupied was hedged in with honeysuckles and prairie-roses, that sheltered the grounds and leaped up here and there among the magnolia-trees, lacing them together in festoons and arcades of fantastic beauty.

Poor, poor Zulima! With this beautiful paradise to wander in, with the sweet air, the warm sky, and all that world of flowers, how unhappy she was! Alone—utterly alone!—her child slept in the bosom of another; her husband had been months away in the far North; an unacknowledged wife, a bereaved parent, how could she choose but weep? Weeks had gone by and no letter reached her; at first her husband had written every day; and with his letters, eloquent of love, lying against her heart, she could not be wholly miserable; thinking of him she sometimes forgot to mourn for her child. At first she had been greatly distressed by the impediments which the flight of De Grainges had multiplied against the acknowledgment of her marriage, but this event had in no degree shaken the holy trust which that young heart placed in the object of its love. Singularly unambitious in her desires, but impetuous in feeling, she only felt the continued secrecy maintained regarding her marriage, because it separated her from the babe she had learned to love so intensely. True, it served as a restraint upon her husband, and frequently deprived her of his presence, but with her imaginative nature, the slight romance of this privacy only served to keep her affections more vivid and her fancy more restless. She was all impulse, all feeling, and sometimes, like a caged bird, she grew wild and restive under the restraints that necessity had placed upon her.

Weeks went by, one after another, and now Zulima grew wild with vague fears. Why was he silent? where could he be wandering thus to forget her so completely? Her nights were sleepless; her eyes grew bright and wild with feverish anxiety. That young heart was in every way prepared for the poison which was to be poured into it drop by drop, till jealousy, that most fierce and bitter of all the passions, should break forth in its might and change her whole being.

Zulima had gone forth alone, not into the garden to sigh among its wilderness of blossoms, but away, with an aching heart and pale forehead, to suffer among the wild nooks of the neighboring hollows. Here nature started to life in harsher beauty, and sent forth her sweets with a sort of rude waywardness, forming a contrast to the voluptuous air and over cultivation that closed in her home, as it were, from the rough and true things of the world.

Another day was to be passed in that agony of impatience which none but those of a highly imaginative nature can ever dream of—a weary night had been spent, the morning had come—surely, surely that day must bring a letter from the absent one.

The air of her chamber—that chamber where her child had slept in her bosom, where he had been so often—she would not wait there; all the associations were so vivid, they goaded her on to keener impatience. She could not draw a deep breath in that room, thinking of him and it.

So, as I have said, Zulima stole forth and wandered away where all was wild as her own feelings, and a thousand times more tranquil. Ross had promised her to return very early from the city that day, when he hoped—the villain could not look into her eyes as he said it—when he hoped to bring a letter that would make his sweet guest smile again.

Zulima knew a place near the highway which led to the city, and yet sheltered from any traveler that might pass, by the broken banks of a rivulet. Thick trees fell over it, and in some places the water was completely embowered by their branches. She could hear the tread of a horse from the spot, should one pass up from the city; and so, with a cheek that kindled and a heart that leaped to each sound, the young creature sat down to wait. To wait! oh, how hard a task for her untamed spirit, her eager wishes! Never till her marriage with Mr. Clark had Zulima’s vivid nature been fully aroused; never before had she been capable of the exquisite joy, the intense suffering that marked every stage of her attachment to that lofty and singular man. As she sat then by the lonely brook, the young creature gave herself up to a reverie that embraced all her life, for life with her seemed to have commenced only since she had met him. She drew forth his letters and read them again and again; tears blinded her sometimes, but she swept them away with her fingers, and read on, kissing here and there a line that spoke most eloquently to her heart. She came to the last letter; that was more ardent in its language, and warmer in its expression of love, than any of the others had been. Why was this the last? What had happened to check a pen so eloquent, to chill a heart so warm? Was he dead? This was Zulima’s thought; she never doubted his faith or distrusted his honor for a single moment. When the serpent jealousy reaches a heart like hers, it comes with a fling, striking his fang suddenly and at once. Zulima was not jealous, but that fierce pain lay coiled close by her heart, ready to make a leap that should envenom her whole being. More than once Zulima had started from her seat at some slight sound, which proved to be only a bird rising from the overhanging bank, or a rabbit leaping across the thick sward, and thus, between hope and despondency, dreams and thoughts of the stern real, the time crept by till noon. A wooden bridge scarcely lifted above the water, spanned the brook only a few yards from where Zulima was sitting. Here the bank fell abruptly, giving descent to a pretty cascade half swept by a sheet of pendant willow-branches. Their delicate shadows, broken with long gleams of sunshine falling aslant the water, told Zulima that the time of Ross’s return was fast drawing near. Now she became cruelly restless. Like some bright spirit sent down to trouble the waters at her feet, she wandered along the broken bank, gathered quantities of wild-flowers but to cast them away at the least noise, and frightening the ground-birds from their nests with reckless inattention to their cries, always listening, and half the time holding her breath with impatient longing for something to break the entire solitude that encompassed her.

It came at last—the distant tread of a horse—more than one—Zulima’s quick ear detected that in an instant. Still she could not be mistaken in the hoof-tread; she had heard it a hundred times when her heart was beating tumultuously as then, but without the sharp anxiety that now sent the blood from her cheek and lips while she listened. Ross had ridden her husband’s horse to the city that day, and she would have been sure of his approach though a troop of cavalry had blended its tramp with the well-known tread.

Zulima started from her motionless attitude, and springing up the bank, stood sheltered by the willow-branches, waiting for Ross to pass the bridge, when she would demand her letter. There she stood, trembling with keen impatience, eager and yet afraid of the sharp disappointment that might follow.

How leisurely those two horsemen rode toward the bridge! They were conversing earnestly, and the animals they rode moved close together, as if the riders were intent on some subject to which they feared giving full voice even in that profound solitude. They crossed the bridge at a walk, and without seeming quite conscious how it happened, the two men checked their horses close by the willows, and continued their conversation.

With one foot strained back and the other just lifted from the turf, ready to spring forward, Zulima had watched them coming, but somehow her heart sunk as they drew near, and without knowing it, she allowed that eager foot to sink heavily on the turf again, and shrinking timidly within her shelter, she waited with a beating heart for the conversation to be checked, that she might come forward without intrusion.

“Zulima!” they had used that name once, twice, before her agitation permitted the fact to convey any impression to her mind. But with that name was coupled another that would almost have aroused her heart from the apathy of death itself.

“We must convey it to her gradually; she must be subdued by degrees,” said Ross, smoothing the mane of his horse with one hand.

“Yes,” replied the other—the same man who had accompanied Ross on his visit to De Grainges’ cell—“with her inexperience and impetuous temper, there is no judging what extravagance she might enact. She might even start off in search of him, and then—”

Here a sensation of faintness came over Zulima, and she lost a few words. When the mist cleared from her brain, Ross was speaking.

“He would not see her. You do not know the man—see!”

Ross took a letter from his pocket, and the two held it between them, while Ross once or twice pointed out a paragraph with his finger and commented on it in a voice so low that Zulima could only gather what he said from the expression of his face.

The first words that she could distinguish were:

“This silence has already driven her wild; you will have a fine time of it when she hears this gossip about a rival.”

“It may not reach her; indeed, how can it?”

“These things always reach head-quarters sooner or later,” was the reply, so far as it reached Zulima, for that moment the horse which Ross rode became tired of inaction and shied around suddenly; his rider with difficulty secured the letter, which was crushed in his hand, as he hastened to draw the curb, while an envelope, which had contained it, fluttered to the ground.

“Let it go, let it go. I have all that is important,” cried Ross, checking his companion, who was about to dismount, and reining in his impatient steed with difficulty.

The next instant they were both out of sight.

Scarcely had they gone, when Zulima sprang from her covert and seized the envelope. It was her husband’s writing, addressed to Ross, the post-mark Philadelphia—a letter from her husband and not to her! Zulima held her breath; she looked wildly around, as if in search of something that could explain this mystery; then her eyes fell to the writing again. Tears, that seemed half fire, flashed down upon the paper; her lips began to quiver, she covered the fragment of paper with passionate kisses, and then cast it from her, exclaiming wildly, “Not to me—not to me!”

Zulima returned home that day as she had never done before. The slow, creeping pace, so eloquent of depression and baffled hope, that had previously marked her return home, was exchanged for a hurried tread and excited demeanor. She was fully aroused to a sense of wrong, to a knowledge that some mystery existed which involved her own future. All her suspicions were vague and wildly combined with such facts as lay before her, but not the less powerful and engrossing.

She found Ross in the hall, standing by the back-door, which opened to the garden, and talking to his traveling companion. The conference was checked as she came up, and she heard Ross say, quickly, “Hush! hush! she is here!” Then the two stepped out and sauntered slowly along the garden-walk. Zulima followed their footsteps, and with the wild fire of excitement burning in her cheeks and eyes.

Ross turned to meet her. His look was calm, his voice compassionate.

“We have heard nothing. There was no letter,” he said, interpreting the question that hung on her lips.

“No letter to any one?”

Ross looked at her keenly. It was a strange question, and startled him. Could the young creature suspect that he was in correspondence with her husband? She might conjecture, but could not know. With this thought he answered her:

“He seems to have forgotten all his friends, for even upon business Mr. Clark communicates with no one.”

Zulima parted her lips to answer, but checking herself, she turned away and went to her room. Her previous distrust of Ross was fully confirmed by the false answer that he had given; henceforth she resolved to act for herself.

There was a storm that night; the orange-trees and the thick lime-groves were swept by a hurricane that rocked the old mansion house like a cradle. The rain came down in torrents, dashing against the windows, and sweeping out with the wind in waves of dusky silver. All night long the lightning and the winds wrangled and caroused around the house, kindling up the chamber of Zulima every other moment with a torrent of white flame. She was writing—always writing, or with impatient hands tearing up that which she had done, dissatisfied that language could not be made more eloquent. She lifted her pale face as the lightning came in, sweeping over her loosened hair and her long white robe, and longed to dip her pen in the flame, that it might burn the feelings that were heaving her bosom upon the paper, and kindle like feelings in the soul of her husband. Sometimes the lightning found tears upon her cheek, trickling down from her long eyelashes and raining over her paper in torrents that would have quenched the fiery words she so longed to write; sometimes it found a smile parting her lips, and a gleam of ineffable affection glowing in her eyes. Changeful as the storm was that beautiful face, where the tumult of her feelings was written plainly as the tempest could be traced upon the sky.

At last Zulima became wholly absorbed in that which she was writing. Her pen flew across the paper, her eyes grew luminous with ardent light. She no longer startled at some new outbreak of the storm; when the lightning flashed over her, she only wrote the faster, as if inspired by the flame. A great magnolia-tree near the window, with all its garniture of leaves, its massive branches and broad white blossoms, was uprooted and hurled down upon the house, shaking it furiously in every timber. That instant Zulima was placing her name to the letter, which in all this whirl of the elements she had written to her husband. She dropped the pen with a scream, and darted toward the window. The sash was broken and choked up by a great branch of the magnolia, through whose dark leaves and white blossoms, crushed and broken together, the lightning shot like a storm of lurid arrows. The broken glass, the rent foliage, white and green, fell around Zulima as she thrust aside the massive bough with both hands, and looked forth. It was completely uptorn, that fine old tree! The fresh earth, matted to its roots, rose high in the air, dripping with rain, and its great trunk crushed the wicker garden-seat into atoms, where she and her husband had sat together the evening before his departure. Heart-sick and faint, Zulima drew back. The letter to her husband lay upon the table, and near it the taper flared, throwing a jet of flame over the delicate writing.

Pale and trembling, for the fall of that old magnolia had terrified her like a prophecy, Zulima folded the paper and directed it. But how her hand shook; the name of her husband was blurred as she wrote it, and with a deep sigh she took up the sealing-wax and held it in the half-extinguished light. Her hand was very unsteady, and a drop or two of the hot wax fell upon her palm and wrist, burning into the delicate flesh like a blood-spot. Still, in her sad preoccupation, Zulima felt nothing of the pain, but sealed her letter just as her light flared out, and sat down in the gloom to wait for morning.

Two weary hours she spent in that dark stillness, for the hurricane having done its work, passed off as suddenly as it had arisen, leaving the night hushed and still, like a giant lying down to rest after a hard fight.

When the morning came, with its sweet breath and rosy light, Zulima arose. Hastily binding up her hair, and changing her dress, she took up her letter and left the house. All around the old mansion was littered with vestiges of the storm. She was obliged to make her way through branches heavy with drenched blossoms and young fruit; fragments of lusty vines that had cast their grateful shade around the dwelling but a day before; oak boughs wrenched away from the neighboring groves, and masses of torn foliage that lay heaped upon the door-step and along the walk, she was compelled to traverse on her passage to the highway.

Scarcely heeding the ruin around her, Zulima walked on toward the city; her delicate slippers were speedily saturated with wet, and at another time that tenderly-nurtured frame must have yielded to the discomfort and fatigue of her unusual exertion. But she had an object to attain—an object which depended wholly upon herself; and when a woman’s heart and soul is in an effort, when was her strength known to give way? The old cathedral clock was striking six when Zulima entered New Orleans; a few negroes were abroad, going to or from the markets, and around the wharves arose a confused sound as of a hive of bees preparing to swarm. At another time Zulima might have been startled at finding herself the only white female abroad in a great city, but now she only drew the folds of black lace more closely over her bonnet and walked on. With her own hands she mailed the letter which conveyed, as it were, her soul to the husband who seemed to have forgotten her. A sigh broke up from her heart as the folded paper slid from her hand into the yawning mail-bag, and then, with a feeling of relief born of her own exertions, she turned away.

“I have trusted no one; he will get my letter now,” she murmured over and over again during her rapid walk home, and with that vivid reaction so common to imaginative natures, she became almost happy in the sweet hopes that this reflection aroused to life again. Oh, it is so difficult for the young to feel absolute despair or absolute resignation; both are the fruit of good or evil old age.

Unmolested, as she had left it, Zulima stole back to her chamber. Weary, and yet with a heart more free than it had been for weeks, she flung off her damp garments, and lying down, slept sweetly for an hour. Zulima dreamed that she was sitting with her husband beneath the great magnolia-tree; her babe lay upon the turf laughing gleefully, and, with its little hands in the air, grasping after the summer insects as they flashed overhead. All at once a whirlwind rushed out, as it were, from the depths of the sky, overwhelming her with its violence. She strove to reach her child, but fell upon her face to the earth, shrieking wildly to her husband to save her and it. Then fell upon her one of those dark, fantastic clouds that make our dreams so fragmentary. She felt the magnolia upheave under her, and scatter down the fresh earth from its roots till she was half buried. Husband and child both were gone, leaving her prostrate and almost dead, to battle her way through the storm alone—alone! Zulima awoke with these words upon her lips.

It was but a dream. Louisa had entered the chamber and was examining the wet garments that her mistress had flung off, muttering suspiciously to herself as she saw the soiled slippers and other evidences of an early walk.

“What am de meaning ob all dis? What can de missus be about?” she muttered, casting down the raiment that had excited her distrust. The candle almost burned out, the drops of wax on the table, torn fragments of paper on the floor, were new objects of comment. The torn paper was all written upon, and had been gathered up in a grasp and wrenched asunder. The pieces were large, and might be easily combined. The negress could not read, but, with the quick cunning of her race, she saw that something unusual had happened, with which these fragments were connected, so gathering the papers in her apron, she bore them to her master, whose spy she was.

It was the noise that Louisa made going out which aroused Zulima from her wretched vision. The young creature started up, thanking God that it was but a dream. In moving about the room, she approached a window opening upon the garden just in time to see Ross follow her woman, Louisa, into the little slave-dwelling which we described in our last chapter.

Zulima lingered by the window. It was half an hour before Ross came forth again; he was followed by the slave woman, and stood conversing with her some time in one of the retired walks. Soon after, the young man who had been Ross’s companion from the city the previous day came up, and Louisa seemed to be dismissed. Still the two men conversed earnestly together, and, after a time, slowly retired into the slave-dwelling.

Since the previous day Zulima had grown suspicious, and she remarked all these movements with keen interest. Well she might, for that day and hour, in the low slave-dwelling, was written a letter destined to cast black trouble upon her whole life. There, two fiends, fashioned like men, sat down and concocted a foul slander against that innocent young woman which was to cling around her for years, and which her full strength might struggle against in vain. The very mail which carried out Zulima’s passionate and tender epistle to her husband, bore also a wicked slander framed by these two base men. The pleading words, the endearing expressions, that she had folded up fresh from her innermost soul, that he might know how truly she loved him, went jostling side by side with the fiendish assertion that she, Zulima Clark, had been unfaithful to his love.

And these two letters reached the husband in one package lying close to each other. He read the slander first.

Zulima waited, but no answer ever came to her letter. Week after week she lived upon that painful hope which hangs upon the morrow, and still hope mocked her. Then she grew desperate. One day, when Ross came back from the city empty-handed as usual, Zulima had left his house with the avowed intention of seeking her husband in the North.

“Let her go,” said the fiend, coolly folding the letter she had left behind. “The mail travels faster than she can; my pretty bird shall find all things prepared for her coming.”

Again Ross sat down and wrote to the husband of Zulima, telling him that she fled from his house at night to escape the vigilant watch which had been placed upon her actions. The letter reached its destination and performed its evil work.

Zulima had taken passage for the North, but the brig must lie at its wharf a few hours, and the unhappy young creature was far too restless for confinement in the close cabin. A yearning desire possessed her to go and search for her infant. Though enjoined to caution and strict secresy, the place of her child’s residence had been intrusted to her, and she had found means to see it unsuspected, from time to time, before her husband’s departure. Now, when she was going in agony of spirit to seek the father, she could not depart without embracing his child once more, and, with its little hands around her neck, praying God to bless her mission. Urged by these keen desires, Zulima threw a scarf around her, and drawing down her vail, entered the streets of New Orleans. The house where her child lived was in the suburbs, and she was obliged to cross the city. With a quick step she threaded the streets, heedless of observation and only desirous of reaching her child before the brig was ready to sail.

Was it fate, or was it that sublime intuition that belongs to the higher order of feelings, which led poor Zulima by one of those large Catholic burial-places in New Orleans which seem to open the way to eternity through a paradise of flowers? It must have been the spiritual essence in her nature, for as the young mother passed this beautiful place of death, she looked eagerly through the gates, and something impelled her to enter. A wilderness of tombs, draped and garmented with vines all in blossom, and shrubs that exhaled perfume from every leaf, lay before her, and at that moment death looked so pleasant to poor Zulima that she longed to lie down and let her heart stop beating where so many had found quiet rest. These reflections brought tears to her eyes; she felt them dropping fast beneath her vail, and entered the inclosure that no one might witness her grief. Slowly and sadly she wandered on, forgetful of her purpose and possessed of a vague idea that her errand led no farther. A strange and dreamy sensation crept over her, the vigor of her limbs gave way, and sweeping the purple clusters of a passion flower from one of the marble slabs, she sat down. Zulima put aside her vail, and began to read the inscription upon the tomb while listlessly passing her finger through the deeply-cut letters.

It was an infant’s tomb. A child eighteen months old lay beneath the marble. Eighteen months—that was the age of her child, little Myra. She started up. It seemed as if her weight upon the marble could injure the little sleeper. Carefully drawing the passion-vine over the stone again, she turned away and was about to depart. But that instant there came bounding along the vista of a neighboring walk a young child, evidently rejoicing over its escape from some person who might have controlled its actions. In and out through the flowery labyrinth it darted, its chestnut curls floating on the wind, and its blue sash, loose at one end, sweeping the tombs at every turn. The child, at last, felt evidently quite secure from pursuit, for, leaning forward upon one tiny foot, she peered roguishly through the branches and burst into a clear ringing laugh that sounded amid the stillness like the sudden gush of a fountain.

Through and through Zulima’s heart rang that silvery shout; eye, lip, and cheek lighted up to the sound; she reached forth her arms—“Myra! Myra!”

The child heard her name and turned like a startled fawn, still laughing, but afraid that the black nurse had found her. When she saw only a beautiful woman with eyes brimful of tears, and outstretched hands, the laugh fled from her lips, and fixing her large brown eyes wonderingly on the strange face for a moment, she drew timidly toward the tomb by which Zulima stood.

“My child! my own dear child!” broke from the lips of that young mother, and sinking upon her knees, she snatched the little girl to her bosom, covering her lips and forehead with kisses.

“Do you love me? Myra, do you love me?” she cried, holding back the face of the infant between both her trembling hands, and gazing fondly on it through her tears; “Do you love me, Myra?”

At first the little girl was startled by the passionate tenderness of her mother, and she struggled to get away from the bosom that heaved so tumultuously against her form; but, as this touching cry for affection broke from Zulima’s lips, the child ceased to struggle, and lifting her clear eyes with a look of wondering pity, she clasped her little hands over her mother’s neck, and to her trembling lips pressed that little rosy mouth.

“Don’t cry so, I do love you!” lisped the child, in its sweet imperfect language.

These pretty words unlocked a flood of tender grief in the mother’s heart. She arose, with the child in her arms, and sat down upon the tomb. Smiles now broke through her tears, and during fifteen minutes it seemed to Zulima as if she had passed through that place of tombs into paradise, so sweet was the love that flooded her heart with every lisping tone of her child. But for the poor mother there was no lasting happiness. While her bosom was full of these sweet maternal feelings, there came tearing through the shrubbery a negro woman, panting with haste, and shouting in a coarse voice the name of little Myra.

“We must part, my child!” murmured Zulima, turning pale as the woman caught sight of her charge from a tomb which she had mounted to command a view of the grounds, and with a degree of self-command that was wonderful even to herself, she arose and led the little girl forward.

“Oh, Miss Myra, Miss Myra!” cried the negress, snatching up the little girl and kissing her with a degree of eagerness that made poor Zulima shudder; “what should I have done if you had been lost in earnest?”

Myra struggled to get away, and held out her arms to Zulima. How pale the poor mother was! Her eyes sparkled though at this proof of fondness in the child, and taking her from the woman, she kissed her forehead, and leading her a little way off, bent down with a hand upon those bright ringlets, and called down a blessing from God upon her daughter. Ah! these blessings, what holy things they are! The sunshine they pour forth, how certain it is to flow back to the source and fill it with brightness! If “curses are like chickens that always come home to roost,” are not blessings like the ringdoves that coo most tenderly in the nest that shelters their birth? For many a day, while tossed upon the waters, Zulima was the happier for having seen and blessed her child.

CHAPTER III.

Oh, she was like a fawn, chased to the plain,

Half blind with grief and mad with sudden pain

That plunges wildly in its first despair,

To any copse that offers shelter there.

It was near midsummer when one of the city postmen of Philadelphia entered a large warehouse in the business part of that city. He approached the principal desk with a bundle of papers and letters on one arm, from which he drew a single letter bearing the New Orleans post-mark. A young man who stood at the desk writing what appeared to be business notes, of which a pile, damp with ink, lay at his elbow, took the letter, and thrusting his pen back of one ear, prepared to open it. There was an appearance of great and even slovenly haste about this letter. The paper was folded unevenly. The wax had been dropped upon it in a rude mass, and was roughly stamped with a blurred impression which it would have been difficult to make out. The address was blotted, and every thing about it bore marks of rough haste. The young merchant broke open the seal with some trepidation, for the singular appearance of the letter surprised him not a little. He read half a dozen of the first lines, then looking over his shoulder as if afraid some one might see that which he had read, he turned his back to the desk and was soon wholly absorbed in the contents of the epistle. As he turned over the page, you would have seen the color gradually deepen upon his cheeks, and even flush up to the forehead, as if there was something in the epistle which did not altogether please him. After a little he folded the letter, compressing his lips the while, and fell into deep thought. The service which this letter required of him was one against which every honest feeling of his heart revolted; but his worldly prospects, his hopes of advancement in life, all depended upon the writer. Ross had been his friend; had placed him in the Philadelphia branch of a great commercial house; and to thwart one of his wishes might prove absolute ruin.

Ross had omitted in that epistle nothing that could persuade or reason into wrong. It was doubtful, he said, even if Clark ever had been married to Zulima; or, being so, if he would not deem it a good service in his friends to relieve him of the obligations imposed by that union. Bitter and cruel were the accusations urged against that poor young wife; and with his interests all with her enemies, joined to a lively desire to think ill of her, in order to justify his conduct to his own heart, this weak and cruel man yielded himself to become the tool of a deeper and far more unprincipled villain than himself. Again and again he perused that letter, and at length put it carefully away in his breast-pocket, close to a heart which its evil folds were doomed to harden against the secret whisperings of a conscience that would not be entirely hushed.

Perhaps, had James Smith been given time for after reflection, he might have become shocked with the part that he was called upon to perform; but the letter which opened this wicked scheme to him had been delayed and carried in a wrong direction by the mail, and nearly two weeks had been thus lost after the time when it should have reached him.

Smith had scarcely turned from his desk with the evil letter in his bosom, when another man entered the warehouse and placed a little rose-tinted note in his hand. A vague idea that this note had some connection with the slovenly epistle that he had just read took possession of him, before he broke the drop of pale-green wax that sealed it.

The conjecture proved real—Zulima had written that note. She was in Philadelphia, and hoped through her husband’s protege to hear some news of him. Smith had no time for reflection; he was called upon to act at once. He went to the hotel where Zulima was staying. Smith entered the hotel hurriedly, as one who has a painful task to accomplish and wishes it over. He was not villain enough to act with deliberation, or with that crafty coldness which fitted Ross so singularly for a domestic conspirator. When he found himself in the presence of this helpless young mother; when he gazed upon her beauty, dimmed—it is true, by all that she had suffered, but obtaining thereby a soft melancholy that was far more touching than the glow of youth in its full joy can ever be,—his heart smote him for the wrong it had meditated against her. He sat down by her side, trembling and almost as anxious as she was.

“My husband,” said Zulima, turning her eloquent eyes upon his downcast face; “you know him, sir—he is your friend; tell me where he is to be found.”

“Your husband, madam! of whom do you speak?”

“Of Mr. Clark—Daniel Clark—your benefactor and my husband,” said Zulima.

“Daniel Clark, lady?”

“I wish to see him—I must see him—tell me where he is to be found.” Zulima was breathless with impatience; her large eyes brightened, her cheeks took a faint color. She was determined that nothing should keep her from the presence of her husband.

“And you—you are the young lady that went South with him the last time he was here?” said Smith, bending his eyes to the floor and faltering in his speech.

“Yes, I went with him—I was his wife!”

Smith shook his head; a faint smile crept over his mouth; he seemed to doubt her assertion.

Zulima saw it, and her face kindled with indignant passion. “I am his wife!” she said.

“The marriage—was it not secret? was it not almost without witness?”

“Secret? yes; but not entirely without witnesses. I can prove my marriage.”

“You can prove that some ceremony took place; but can you prove that it was a real marriage ceremony? Indeed, have you never had reason to doubt that it was such?”

“Never, sir,” replied Zulima, turning pale, “never!”

“You were very young, very confiding,” replied Smith. “Yet you had some experience in the perfidy of man: this should have made you cautious.”

“Oh, my experience! it had been bitter—terrible!” murmured Zulima, clasping her hands, and gazing on the face of her visitor with a look of wild excitement.

“And yet you trusted again!”

Zulima stood up; her face grew white as death. “Do you mean to say, sir, that my husband—that Daniel Clark deceived me like the other?”

“I mean to say nothing,” replied Smith; “nothing, save that from my heart I pity you, sweet lady. So much beauty, so trusting; who could help pitying you?”

“You pity me? Oh, Father of mercies!” cried the excited young creature, bending like a reed and raising her locked hands to her eyes; “if this thing should be true!” She fell upon a chair; her slight figure waved to and fro in the agony of her doubts.

“Has he written—did he send for you?” questioned Smith, steeling himself against her grief.

“No, no!”

“Is he aware of your coming?”

“No; I shall surprise him; I wished to surprise him!” cried the wretched young creature, dropping her hands.

“I am afraid you will surprise him, and unpleasantly, too!” said Smith.

Zulima turned her dry eyes upon him; her lips parted, but she had no power to utter the questions that arose in her heart. A thousand black doubts possessed her. “Why—why—?” It was all she could say.

Smith hesitated; he was reluctant to consummate the last act of villainy required of him. It seemed like striking down a lamb, while its soft, trusting eyes were fixed upon his. But he had gone too far, he could not recede now.