vail myself of this
opportunity for effecting my mother's emancipation; and Frasquito knew
too well that I would make any personal sacrifice to release my beloved
parent from bondage.

I, however, told Frasquito that his offer had so taken me by surprise,
that he must give me time to consider of it, and that in the meanwhile
he must never allude to the subject.

Tunicu, to whom alone I confided what had passed between me and my
admirer, scouted the notion of my alliance with the 'son of a nigger,'
as he expressed it; but strange to tell, he did not seem angry at the
fact of matrimony having been proposed by another.

'You are too fair and too refined,' said he, 'for the son of a black
man. When you marry, you must be wedded to somebody having better
antecedents than that, Ermina mia.'

I felt the truth of his remark, and now began to consider my late offer
in the light of an insult. The mulatto's pretensions to my hand must
surely, I thought, have been induced by his knowledge of my birth, for
he would not have ventured to make such a proposal to a white woman; and
perfectly aware of my secret attachment, he seemed to have implied that
I was incapable of commanding the true love of a white man. Impressed
with these reflections, I resolved to test the truth of the mulatto's
inuendos, and, for the first time, I broached to Tunicu the subject
nearest my heart.

'Do you think, mi amor,' said I to my lover, 'that I shall ever marry as
well as you could desire?'

Tunicu paused, before replying to my question, and then
observed--turning his gaze from me as he spoke:--

'Why should not mi Ermina marry well? She is young, beautiful,
accomplished--'

--'and the daughter of a slave!' I added; my eyes moistening as I
uttered the terrible words.

For a few moments my lover remained silent and pensive Then recovering
himself, he began to converse in his old, confident, assuring manner,
gratifying my imagination with pictures of events which were never to
happen, and promising things impossible to be realised. At least nothing
ever did happen as Tunicu had predicted, while one event shortly
transpired which in his wildest dreams had never occurred to him.

That event was the Cuban insurrection, which, as you know, has already
affected the lives of hundreds of my unhappy countrymen and
countrywomen; but in what manner it would concern our future destinies,
neither Tunicu nor I could possibly foretell.

CHAPTER XXVI