“Brave! Men who have sailed with him say he knows no fear; the last voyage they tell how he sprang into the icy sea, all booted as he was, waves mountain high, the night of inky blackness, to save a worthless, brutal Lascar sailor. Tender as a woman, when a mere child as careful of baby Cousin Lucy as a granddame could be, and ever her sturdy little knight and champion from babyhood. Poor Jack!” Again the current of his thought changed its course. He paused and whispered to himself, “Lucy, am I worthy of her? Shall I prove as kind, as true and brave a husband as Jack would be to her? Oh! God, I hope so, I will try so hard. Sometimes there seems to come a strange inexplicable spell over my spirit—a something that is beyond my control. A madness seems to possess my very soul. Involuntarily I say and do that, during the time that this mysterious influence holds me powerless in its grasp, that is so foreign to my natural self that I shudder and grow sick at heart at the thought of the end to which it may lead me.” At the recollection of some horror of the past the young man’s face paled and he shivered as if struck by a cold blast of winter wind. “Ought I to tell Lucy of these singular manifestations? Ought I to alarm my darling concerning something that may partly be imaginary? I am uncertain what, loving her as I do, is right; I can always absent myself from her presence when I feel that hateful influence upon me, and perhaps after I am married I may be freed from the horrible thraldom of that irresistible power that clutches me in its terrible grasp. I cannot bear the idea of giving my dear love useless pain or trouble. Had I not better wait?” At that moment some unpleasant fact must have suggested itself or rather forced itself upon Burton’s mind for he pushed back the piano-stool and rising walked with impatient steps about the room, saying: “It would be ridiculous! Absurd! Really unworthy of both Lucy and myself even to mention the subject! Long ago that old, nonsensical prejudice had disappeared, at least among cultivated people in America. There is not a shade of doubt but that both the Messrs. Dunlap and Lucy are aware of the fact that my mother was a quadroon. Doubtless that circumstance is deemed so trivial that it never has occurred to them to mention it to me. People of education and refinement, regardless of the color of skin, are welcome in the home of the Dunlaps as everywhere else where enlightenment has dispelled prejudice.” He paused and bursting into a musical and merry laugh at something that his memory recalled, exclaimed, “Why, I have seen men and women as black as the proverbial ‘ace of spades,’ the guests of honor in Mr. James Dunlap’s house, as elsewhere in Boston. I shall neither bore nor insult the intelligence of my sweetheart or her family by introducing the absurd subject of blood in connection with our marriage. The idea of blood making any difference! Men are neither hounds nor horses!”