They were her ancestors; their blood, degraded by generations of slavery, flowed in her veins. Her education, her refinement, her prejudices would only be instruments of torture now, with that secret consciousness of shame and degradation underlying them. It was as cruel, as complete, as if it had been planned with Machiavellian art to this ending; and through the confused misery of her thoughts ran a sensation of pity for her mother, that she had so unconsciously spoiled her work. Presently the stunned feeling passed, and she rose to her feet again, and walked about the room. On the bed and chairs were strewed the pretty things belonging to her wedding outfit. Half unconsciously she folded and put them away. She would not need them now. Once she went to the mirror, and, leaning close to it, looked at herself, seeking for traces of that race she had been taught to regard as the lowest on earth. Did that soft fullness of lip, that crisp wave in her hair, that velvety, opaque skin come from her mother? A momentary savage rage thrilled her. She struck the glass so fierce a blow with her closed hand that it cracked from bottom to top. Then her eyes fell on her lover’s picture, placed in an open velvet frame, and she paled and shuddered. She did not touch it, though a hundred times it had been pressed to heart and lip, but gazed at it with that intense parting look we give the dead before they are hidden forever from us; then she leaned over the bureau, her head bowed upon her folded arms. The afternoon passed; twilight crept into the room. Faint sounds of life came up from the lower part of the house; the tea-bell rang; at last some one came slowly, heavily up the stairs, shuffled across the hall, and knocked on her door. "Miss Mad’line, Miss Mad’line." She opened the door, and found Aunt Dilsey standing there, a big, coffee-colored mulatto woman, panting from the exertion of mounting the stairs, the wrinkles in her fat neck filled with little streams of perspiration. "Miss Agnese an’ de priest man air waitin’ fo’ yo’ to come down to supper, honey, an’ Miss Agnese say hurry, de cakes gwine git cold," she said in a full rich voice; but Madeline only caught her by the shoulder, and stared at her thick brown skin, her coarse crinkled hair, her protruding lips, and broad figure. So her grandmother might have looked. "Fo’ mercy’s sake, honey, what’s de matter? Air yo’ sick?" cried Aunt Dilsey in a frightened, anxious tone; but the girl only turned from her, and fell upon the bed with a moan of despair. She heard the old negress hurrying downstairs, and then her mother’s light swift steps, and tried to compose herself. "My darling, what is the matter?" cried Mrs. Capelle, bending tenderly, anxiously over her. "It is only a—a—headache," said Madeline, glad that the twilight hid her face from those loving, searching eyes. "Are you sure? Dilsey frightened me so." "Dilsey is a foolish old creature."