believe that she would have retrieved our
fortune. I know that she had more executive ability than my father. He
was very squeamish about selling his servants, but she would have put
every one of them in her pocket before permitting them to eat her out of
house and home. But whom _are_ you going to marry?"

"A young lady who graduates from a Northern seminary next week,"
responded Eugene.

"I think you are very selfish," said Lorraine. "You might have invited
a fellow to go with you to be your best man."

"The wedding is to be strictly private. The lady whom I am to marry has
negro blood in her veins."

"The devil she has!" exclaimed Lorraine, starting to his feet, and
looking incredulously on the face of Leroy. "Are you in earnest? Surely
you must be jesting."

"I am certainly in earnest," answered Eugene Leroy. "I mean every word I
say."

"Oh, it can't be possible! Are you mad?" exclaimed Lorraine.

"Never was saner in my life."

"What under heaven could have possessed you to do such a foolish thing?
Where did she come from."

"Right here, on this plantation. But I have educated and manumitted her,
and I intend marrying her."

"Why, Eugene, it is impossible that you can have an idea of marrying one
of your slaves. Why, man, she is your property, to have and to hold to
all intents and purposes. Are you not satisfied with the power and
possession the law gives you?"

"No. Although the law makes her helpless in my hands, to me her
defenselessness is her best defense."

"Eugene, we have known each other all of our lives, and, although I have
always regarded you as eccentric, I never saw you so completely off your
balance before. The idea of you, with your proud family name, your vast
wealth in land and negroes, intending to marry one of them, is a mystery
I cannot solve. Do explain to me why you are going to take this
extremely strange and foolish step."

"You never saw Marie?"

"No; and I don't want to."

"She is very beautiful. In the North no one would suspect that she has
one drop of negro blood in her veins, but here, where I am known, to
marry her is to lose caste. I could live with her, and not incur much if
any social opprobrium. Society would wink at the transgression, even if
after she had become the mother of my children I should cast her off and
send her and them to the auction block."

"Men," replied Lorraine, "would merely shrug their shoulders; women
would say you had been sowing your