Alfred; "but no
circumstances could alter my estimate of your daughters. Their beauty
and gracefulness exceed anything I have seen."

"And they are as innocent and good as they are beautiful," rejoined
the father. "But you can easily imagine that my pride and delight in
them is much disturbed by anxiety concerning their future. Latterly,
I have thought a good deal about closing business and taking them to
France to reside. But when men get to be so old as I am, the process
of being transplanted to a foreign soil seems onerous. If it were as
well for _them_, I should greatly prefer returning to my native New
England."

"They are tropical flowers," observed Alfred. "There is nothing
Northern in their natures."

"Yes, they are tropical flowers," rejoined the father, "and my wish is
to place them in perpetual sunshine. I doubt whether they could ever
feel quite at home far away from jasmines and orange-groves. But
climate is the least of the impediments in the way of taking them
to New England. Their connection with the enslaved race is so very
slight, that it might easily be concealed; but the consciousness of
practising concealment is always unpleasant. Your father was more free
from prejudices of all sorts than any man I ever knew. If he were
living, I would confide all to him, and be guided implicitly by his
advice. You resemble him so strongly, that I have been involuntarily
drawn to open my heart to you, as I never thought to do to so young a
man. Yet I find the fulness of my confidence checked by the fear of
lowering myself in the estimation of the son of my dearest friend. But
perhaps, if you knew all the circumstances, and had had my experience,
you would find some extenuation of my fault. I was very unhappy when I
first came to New Orleans. I was devotedly attached to a young lady,
and I was rudely repelled by her proud and worldly family. I was
seized with a vehement desire to prove to them that I could become
richer than they were. I rushed madly into the pursuit of wealth, and
I was successful; but meanwhile they had married her to another, and I
found that wealth alone could not bring happiness. In vain the profits
of my business doubled and quadrupled. I was unsatisfied, lonely, and
sad. Commercial transactions brought me into intimate relations with
Senor Gonsalez, a Spanish gentleman in St. Augustine. He had formed an
alliance with a beautiful slave, whom he had bought in the French West
Indies. I neve