and Heaven knows he was tempted,
he could respect the honour of his friend, though that friend lay
sleeping in a soldier's grave ten thousand miles away."

And Marie threw herself upon Sabina's neck, and under the pressure of
her misery sobbed out to her the story of her life. What it was need
not be told. A little common sense, and a little knowledge of human
nature, will enable the reader to fill up for himself the story of a
beautiful slave.

Sabina soothed her, and cheered her; and soothed and cheered her most
of all by telling her in return the story of her own life; not so dark
a one, but almost as sad and strange. And poor Marie took heart, when
she found in her great need a sister in the communion of sorrows.

"And you have been through all this, so beautiful and bright as you
are! You whom I should have fancied always living the life of the
humming-bird: and yet not a scar or a wrinkle has it left behind!"

"They were there once, Marie! but God and Claude smoothed them away."

"I have no Claude,--and no God, I think, at times."

"No God, Marie! Then how did you come hither?"

Marie was silent, reproved; and then passionately--

"Why does He not right my people?"

That question was one to which Sabina's little scheme of the universe
had no answer; why should it, while many a scheme which pretends to be
far vaster and more infallible has none as yet?

So she was silent, and sat with Marie's head upon her bosom, caressing
the black curls, till she had soothed her into sobbing exhaustion.

"There; lie there and rest: you shall be my child, my poor Marie. I
have a fresh child every week; but I shall find plenty of room in my
heart for you, my poor hunted deer."

"You will keep my secret?"

"Why keep it? No one need be ashamed of it here in free England."

"But he--he--you do not know, Sabina! Those Northerners, with all
their boasts of freedom, shrink from us just as much as our own
masters."

"Oh, Marie, do not be so unjust to him! He is too noble, and you must
know it yourself."

"Ay, if he stood alone; if he were even going to live in England; if
he would let himself be himself; but public opinion," sobbed the poor
self-tormentor--"It has been his God, Sabina, to be a leader of
taste and fashion--admired and complete--the Crichton of Newport and
Brooklyn. And he could not bear scorn, the loss of society. Why should
he bear it for me? If he had been one of the abolitionist party, it
would have