-loving
God who could let a child be born and grow up, and fill its soul
with every hope, and then bereave it of everything that was dear and
desirable--even of hope.

But the hapless girl had been piously brought up; she could still
believe and pray; and lately it had seemed as though Heaven would grant
that for which her tender heart most longed: the love of a beloved and
love-worthy man. And now--now?

There she stood with an inconsolable sense of
bereavement--empty-hearted; and if she had been miserable before Orion's
return, now she was far more so; for whereas she had then been lonely
she was now defrauded--she, the daughter of Thomas, the relation and
inmate of the wealthiest house in the country; and close to her, from
the rough hewn, dirty dyers' sheds such clear and happy laughter rang
out from a troop of wretched slave wenches, always liable to the blows
of the overseer's rod, that she could not help listening and turning
to look at the girls on whom such an overflow of high spirits and
light-heartedness was bestowed.

A large party had collected under the wide palm-thatched roof of the
dyeing shed-pretty and ugly, brown and fair, tall and short; some
upright and some bent by toil at the loom from early youth, but all
young; not one more than eighteen years old. Slaves were capital,
bearing interest in the form of work and of children. Every slave girl
was married to a slave as soon as she was old enough. Girls and married
women alike were employed in the weaving shop, but the married ones
slept in separate quarters with their husbands and children, while
the maids passed the night in large sleeping-barracks adjoining the
worksheds. They were now enjoying the evening respite and had gathered
in two groups. One party were watching an Egyptian girl who was
scribbling sketches on a tablet; the others were amusing themselves with
a simple game. This consisted in each one in turn flinging her shoe over
her head. If it flew beyond a chalk-line to which she turned her back
she was destined soon to marry the man she loved; if it fell between
her and the mark she must yet have patience, or would be united to a
companion she did not care for.

The girl who was drawing, and round whom at least twenty others were
crowded, was a designer of patterns for weaving; she had too the gift
which had characterized her heathen ancestors, of representing faces
in profile, with a few simple lines, in such a way that, though oft