Mrs. Gentry had attired herself in her new spring costume, a feuillemorte silk, with a bonnet trimmed to match, of the frightful coal-hod shape, with sable roses and a bristling ruche. It was just such a bonnet as Proserpine, Queen of the Shades, might have chosen for a stroll with Pluto along the shore of Lake Avernus. After many satisfactory glances in the mirror, Mrs. Gentry sat down and trotted her right foot impatiently. Tarquin, entering, announced the carriage. “Well, go to Miss Ellen, and ask when she’ll be ready.” Five minutes Mrs. Gentry waited, while the horses, pestered by stinging insects, dashed their hoofs against the pavements. At last Tarquin returned with the report that Miss Ellen’s room was empty. “Has Pauline looked for her?” “Yes, missis.” “Ask Esha if she has seen her.” Pauline, standing at the head of the stairs, put the question, and Esha replied testily from the kitchen: “Don’t know nuffin ’bout her. Hab suffin better ter do dan look af’r all de school-gals in dis house.” Pauline turned from the old heathen in despair, and suggested that perhaps Miss Ellen had stepped out to buy a ribbon or some hair-pins. Mrs. Gentry waxed angry. “O, but she’ll be come up with!” This was the teacher’s favorite form of consolation. The _Abolitionists_ would be come up with. Abe Lincoln would be come up with. General Scott would be come up with. Everybody who offended Mrs. Gentry would be come up with,—if not in this world, why then in some other. An hour passed. She began to get seriously alarmed. She sent away the carriage. Hardly had it gone, when a second vehicle drew up before the door, and out of it stepped Mr. Ratcliff. She met him in the parlor, and, fearing to tell the truth, merely remarked, that Ellen was out making a few purchases. “When will she be back?” “Perhaps not till dinner-time.” “Then I’ll call to-morrow at this hour.” Mrs. Gentry passed the day in a state of wretched anxiety. She sent out messengers. She interested a policeman in the search. But no trace of the fugitive! Mrs. Gentry was in despair. If Ellen had not been a slave, her disappearance would have been comparatively a small matter. If it had been somebody’s free-born daughter who had absconded, it wouldn’t have been half so bad. But here was a slave! One whose flight would lay open to suspicion the teacher’s allegiance to _the_ institution! Intolerable! Of course it was no concern of hers to what fate that slave was about to be consigned. Ah! sister of the South,—(and I have known many, the charms of whose persons and manners I thought incomparable,)—a woman whose own virtue is not rooted in sand, cannot, if she thinks and reasons, fail to shudder at a system which sends other women, perhaps as innocent and pure as she herself, to be sold to brutal men at auctions. And yet, if any one had told Mrs. Gentry she was no better than a procuress, both she and the Rev. Dr. Palmer would have thought it an impious aspersion.