dark and
moist.

"Madam, is there anything I can do?"

As she spoke Agnes bent over the helpless woman, and shed her glances
over that pale face, as the upas tree weeps poison.

The unaccountable dislike that Mabel felt for this girl, gave her
strength, and she sat up, stung by the reflection that her weakness had
so objectionable a witness.

"You here, Miss Barker!" she said with cold dignity; "I have always held
this room sacred from all, but my own family."

"I come by invitation," answered Agnes, meekly. "Yesterday afternoon you
left a message with my nurse, desiring that I should seek you before
entering upon my duties again. This command brought me here, not a wish
to intrude."

Mrs. Harrington arose, walked feebly back to the little breakfast-table,
and taking up a small teapot of frosted silver, poured some strong tea
into a cup which she drank off clear. Then moving back her chair, she
sat down, evidently struggling for composure.

"I remember," she said very quietly, for Mabel had controlled herself,
"I remember leaving this message with a woman who called you her
mistress."

Agnes smiled. "Oh, yes, our Southern nurses always claim us in some
form. 'My mammy,' I think she must have called herself that. Every child
has its slave mammy at the South."

"Then you _are_ from the South, Miss Barker?"

"Did not General Harrington tell you this, madam?"

"I do not recollect it, if he did," answered Mabel, searching the girl's
face with her clear eyes; "in truth, Miss Barker, I made so few
inquiries when you entered my family, that your very presence in it is
almost a mystery to me. General Harrington told me you were well
educated, and an orphan. I found that he was correct in the latter
point, but was somewhat astonished yesterday afternoon to hear the woman
whom I met, claim you as her mistress."

"You do not understand our Southern ways, Mrs. Harrington, or this would
not appear so singular. With us the tie between a slave nurse and her
child, is never broken."

"Then this woman is a slave?" questioned Mabel.

"She has been, madam, but though I had nothing else in the world, when I
became of age, she was made a free woman."

"But she is not very black--at least, in the dim light, I saw but faint
traces of it."

Again Agnes smiled a soft unpleasant smile, that one could put no faith
in:

"Perhaps it was that which rendered her so valuable, but black or white,
the woman you saw was a born sla