I too long regarded as
my home? O, who, who will restore this poor 'exile of Erin,' to the home
of her unknown parents? How gladly would I exchange all the splendor of
this place for the homeliest cot in that land of the shamrock and the
cross; ay, the poorest 'cabin, fast by the wild-wood,' in the land of
St. Patrick, and my unknown ancestors."

Such were the soliloquies of poor, despised Alia, in her room on the
third floor, where old aunt Judy, the negro, having missed her favorite
from the grand company, after having sought her in vain in the lower
saloons of the house, just entered her room.

"Dere, now, Miss Ali', am poor aunt Judy half kilt from sarching for you
all over. What make you be here, and all the gran' gem'men asking for
you?"

"Ah, aunt Judy, why have you all along denied of me all knowledge of my
extraction, parentage, and race? Did you not know that I was Irish? and
yet you always denied that I was, though I have suspected I was, and you
must have known it, having lived so long in the family. This is not what
I expected from you, aunt Judy," she said, casting a look of gentle
reproach at the old negro.

"O, dear, miss--O, dear," cried the poor affectionate creature, bursting
into tears; "don't blame dis ole nigger, but massa and missus, and Miss
Sillerman, sister to the missus who died last year. They forbid aunt
Jude to tell who rosy-faced Ali' was. I was bound to swear not to tell.
If they knowed I did hab a _parle_ vit you on de subject, they would
turn poor ole Jude out de door to die in the poor _maison_."

This poor negro woman was a native of St. Domingo, and, at the time of
the revolution there, came to New Orleans, in care of a child belonging
to one of the white planters who was murdered--which child, by the way,
has since become a pious and eminent clergyman. By some accident or
other she fell in with the Goldriches, in their commercial visits to New
Orleans, and, though brought up a Catholic, the poor thing forgot all
practice of her religion, and this accounts for her evasions and denials
to the repeated questions of Alia regarding her parentage and birth.

"'Pon my fait, miss," she ever said, "I know nothing about you, 'cept
that you are the rose-cheeked Ali', the _fleur de lis_ of the flock."

Promises, and flattering presents, and all other persuasive arts of Alia
to get the secret out of Judy proved useless. She had promised to keep
it, and no human authority, she thought, co