It was an infant’s tomb. A child eighteen months old lay beneath the marble. Eighteen months—that was the age of her child, little Myra. She started up. It seemed as if her weight upon the marble could injure the little sleeper. Carefully drawing the passion-vine over the stone again, she turned away and was about to depart. But that instant there came bounding along the vista of a neighboring walk a young child, evidently rejoicing over its escape from some person who might have controlled its actions. In and out through the flowery labyrinth it darted, its chestnut curls floating on the wind, and its blue sash, loose at one end, sweeping the tombs at every turn. The child, at last, felt evidently quite secure from pursuit, for, leaning forward upon one tiny foot, she peered roguishly through the branches and burst into a clear ringing laugh that sounded amid the stillness like the sudden gush of a fountain. Through and through Zulima’s heart rang that silvery shout; eye, lip, and cheek lighted up to the sound; she reached forth her arms—“Myra! Myra!” The child heard her name and turned like a startled fawn, still laughing, but afraid that the black nurse had found her. When she saw only a beautiful woman with eyes brimful of tears, and outstretched hands, the laugh fled from her lips, and fixing her large brown eyes wonderingly on the strange face for a moment, she drew timidly toward the tomb by which Zulima stood. “My child! my own dear child!” broke from the lips of that young mother, and sinking upon her knees, she snatched the little girl to her bosom, covering her lips and forehead with kisses. “Do you love me? Myra, do you love me?” she cried, holding back the face of the infant between both her trembling hands, and gazing fondly on it through her tears; “Do you love me, Myra?” At first the little girl was startled by the passionate tenderness of her mother, and she struggled to get away from the bosom that heaved so tumultuously against her form; but, as this touching cry for affection broke from Zulima’s lips, the child ceased to struggle, and lifting her clear eyes with a look of wondering pity, she clasped her little hands over her mother’s neck, and to her trembling lips pressed that little rosy mouth. “Don’t cry so, I do love you!” lisped the child, in its sweet imperfect language. These pretty words unlocked a flood of tender grief in the mother’s heart. She arose, with the child in her arms, and sat down upon the tomb. Smiles now broke through her tears, and during fifteen minutes it seemed to Zulima as if she had passed through that place of tombs into paradise, so sweet was the love that flooded her heart with every lisping tone of her child. But for the poor mother there was no lasting happiness. While her bosom was full of these sweet maternal feelings, there came tearing through the shrubbery a negro woman, panting with haste, and shouting in a coarse voice the name of little Myra.