e overseer of the Orangery Estate, looking after him with an
evil expression of face.

Vincent Wingfield was the son of an English officer, who, making a tour
in the States, had fallen in love with and won the hand of Winifred
Cornish, a Virginia heiress, and one of the belles of Richmond. After
the marriage he had taken her to visit his family in England; but she
had not been there many weeks before the news arrived of the sudden
death of her father. A month later she and her husband returned to
Virginia, as her presence was required there in reference to business
matters connected with the estate, of which she was now the mistress.

The Orangery, so called from a large conservatory built by Mrs.
Wingfield's grandfather, was the family seat, and the broad lands around
it were tilled by upward of two hundred slaves. There were in addition
three other properties lying in different parts of the State. Here
Vincent, with two sisters, one older and one younger than himself, had
been born. When he was eight years old Major and Mrs. Wingfield had gone
over with their children to England, and had left Vincent there for four
years at school, his holidays being spent at the house of his father's
brother, a country gentleman in Sussex. Then he had been sent for
unexpectedly; his father saying that his health was not good, and that
he should like his son to be with him. A year later his father died.

Vincent was now nearly sixteen years old, and would upon coming of age
assume the reins of power at the Orangery, of which his mother, however,
would be the actual mistress as long as she lived. The four years
Vincent had passed in the English school had done much to render the
institution of slavery repugnant to him, and his father had had many
serious talks with him during the last year of his life, and had shown
him that there was a good deal to be said upon both sides of the
subject.

"There are good plantations and bad plantations, Vincent; and there are
many more good ones than bad ones. There are brutes to be found
everywhere. There are bad masters in the Southern States just as there
are bad landlords in every European country. But even from self-interest
alone, a planter has greater reason for caring for the health and
comfort of his slaves than an English farmer has in caring for the
comfort of his laborers. Slaves are valuable property, and if they are
over-worked or badly cared for they decrease in value. Whereas if the