Clasping her arms round her child, again she wept in silence. The moment was propitious--the summer sun had just set beneath dark foliage in the west, its refulgent curtains now fading into mellow tints; night was closing rapidly over the scene, the serene moon shone softly through the arbour into the little window at her bedside. Again she took him by the hand, invited him to sit down at her side, and, looking imploringly in his face, continued,--"If you are a friend, you can be a friend in confidence, in purpose. I am a slave! yes, a slave; there is much in the word, more than most men are disposed to analyse. It may seem simple to you, but follow it to its degraded depths-follow it to where it sows the seeds of sorrow, and there you will find it spreading poison and death, uprooting all that is good in nature. Worse than that, my child is a slave too. It is that which makes the wrong more cruel, that mantles the polished vice, that holds us in that fearful grasp by which we dare not seek our rights. "My mother, ah! yes, my mother"-Clotilda shakes her head in sorrow. "How strange that, by her misfortune, all, all, is misfortune for ever! from one generation to another, sinking each life down, down, down, into misery and woe. How oft she clasped my hand and whispered in my ear: 'If we could but have our rights.' And she, my mother,--as by that sacred name I called her-was fair; fairer than those who held her for a hideous purpose, made her existence loathsome to herself, who knew the right but forced the wrong. She once had rights, but was stripped of them; and once in slavery who can ask that right be done?" "What rights have you beyond these?" he interrupted, suddenly. "There is mystery in what you have said, in what I have seen; something I want to solve. The same ardent devotion, tenderness, affection,--the same touching chasteness, that characterises Franconia, assimilates in you. You are a slave, a menial-she is courted and caressed by persons of rank and station. Heavens! here is the curse confounding the flesh and blood of those in high places, making slaves of their own kinsmen, crushing out the spirit of life, rearing up those broken flowers whose heads droop with shame. And you want your freedom?" "For my child first," she replied, quickly: "I rest my hopes of her in the future."