mbly and
adroitly with her toilet, laughing at her own fears, as she proceeded.

Mrs. Shelby was a woman of high class, both intellectually and morally.
To that natural magnanimity and generosity of mind which one often marks
as characteristic of the women of Kentucky, she added high moral and
religious sensibility and principle, carried out with great energy and
ability into practical results. Her husband, who made no professions
to any particular religious character, nevertheless reverenced and
respected the consistency of hers, and stood, perhaps, a little in awe
of her opinion. Certain it was that he gave her unlimited scope in all
her benevolent efforts for the comfort, instruction, and improvement of
her servants, though he never took any decided part in them himself. In
fact, if not exactly a believer in the doctrine of the efficiency of the
extra good works of saints, he really seemed somehow or other to fancy
that his wife had piety and benevolence enough for two--to indulge a
shadowy expectation of getting into heaven through her superabundance of
qualities to which he made no particular pretension.

The heaviest load on his mind, after his conversation with the trader,
lay in the foreseen necessity of breaking to his wife the arrangement
contemplated,--meeting the importunities and opposition which he knew he
should have reason to encounter.

Mrs. Shelby, being entirely ignorant of her husband's embarrassments,
and knowing only the general kindliness of his temper, had been quite
sincere in the entire incredulity with which she had met Eliza's
suspicions. In fact, she dismissed the matter from her mind, without a
second thought; and being occupied in preparations for an evening visit,
it passed out of her thoughts entirely.

CHAPTER II

The Mother

Eliza had been brought up by her mistress, from girlhood, as a petted
and indulged favorite.

The traveller in the south must often have remarked that peculiar air of
refinement, that softness of voice and manner, which seems in many cases
to be a particular gift to the quadroon and mulatto women. These natural
graces in the quadroon are often united with beauty of the most dazzling
kind, and in almost every case with a personal appearance prepossessing
and agreeable. Eliza, such as we have described her, is not a fancy
sketch, but taken from remembrance, as we saw her, years ago, in
Kentucky. Safe under the protecting care of her mistress, Eliza had