"Yes, yes; that is what I am longing to do. The secret has become a burden to me: I want to be assured that I have acted rightly about her marriage. You remember my husband’s brother, Lawrence Capelle?" "Well, very well; a handsome young fellow, but rather wild." "And lovable with it all. He died while my husband and I were in France—we were there three years—and before his death he wrote to Anthony, begging him to look after the welfare of a child, a baby, and giving the history of his attachment to a beautiful quadroon in New Orleans. Her mother had been a slave, but this girl had been born free, received a very good education, and grew up superior to her class. She had loved him with rare faith and tenderness, and died at the birth of the child." "They were not married, of course?" "Married? Oh, no; but he had really been quite fond of her, and he dwelt at length upon the beauty and intelligence of the child. We came home very quietly, and before going to our own house, or betraying our presence to even intimate friends, we sought her out, and the moment I took her in my arms, looked into her eyes—Lawrence’s own beautiful gray eyes, smiling with innocent fearlessness straight into my own—my heart went out to her in such a gush of love, pity, tenderness, I did not feel that I could ever be parted from her. Father, she was the loveliest, most lovable child I ever saw. We adopted her, we made her our very own, and no one knew that she had not really been born to us abroad. Not even to you, Father, did we confess the truth. The war came then, and Anthony died at Vicksburg; but I could not feel utterly alone, utterly bereft, while I had Madeline. I made plans for her; I said that she should never know that she was not truly my own child. Her training, her education, became the absorbing interest of my life. After the close of the war I thought it best for her sake to leave New Orleans, to seek a new and more obscure home, away from old friends, old ties. If we remained there she might in some way learn the truth. We came here, you and my lawyer alone knowing where to find us. I have brought her up most carefully. She is refined, beautiful, accomplished, and innocent as a young girl should be, but you can see for yourself what she is. I instilled the strongest race prejudices into her mind. I impressed it upon her that the negro is an inferior creature, a servant of servants, to be treated with kindness, but never to be considered an equal; for a morbid fear that her mother’s blood would betray itself in some coarse or degraded taste, haunted me. But I am no longer afraid for her. Have I acted with wisdom? Have I done well to lift her up?" "Assuredly; only"—he reflected a moment—"only your extreme course in regard to color prejudice would make the truth a hundredfold harder to bear should she discover it."