With Kenrick, brought up on a plantation where slavery existed in its mildest form, meditation on God’s law as written in the enlightened human conscience, completely reversed the views adopted from upholders of the institution. Thenceforth the elegances of his home became hateful. He felt like a robber in the midst of them. The spectacle of some hideous, awkward, perhaps obscene and depraved black woman, hoeing in the corn-field, instead of awakening in his mind, as in Onslow’s, the thought that she was in her proper place, did but move him to tears of bitter contrition and humiliation. How far there was sin or accountability on her part, or that of her progenitors, he could not say; but that there was deep, immeasurable sin on the part of those who, instead of helping that degraded nature to rise, made laws to crush it all the deeper in the mire, he could not fail to feel in anguish of spirit. Through all that there was in her of ugliness and depravity, making her less tolerable than the beast to his æsthetic sense, he could still detect those traits and possibilities that allied her with immortal natures, and in her he saw all her sex outraged, and universal womanhood nailed to the cross of Christ, and mocked by unbelievers! The evening of the day of Clara’s arrival at the St. Charles, Onslow and Kenrick met by agreement in the drawing-room of the Tremaines. Clara had told Laura, that, in going out to purchase a few hair-pins, she had been taken suddenly faint, and that a gentleman, who proved to be Captain Onslow, had escorted her home. “Could anything be more apt for my little plot!” said Laura. “But consider! Here it is eight o’clock, and you’re not dressed! Do you know how long you’ve been sleeping? This will never do!” A servant knocked at the door, with the information that two gentlemen were in the drawing-room. “Dear me! I must go in at once,” said Laura. “Now tell me you’ll be quick and follow, Darling.” Clara gave the required pledge, and proceeded to arrange her hair. Laura looked on for a minute envying her those thick brown tresses, and then darted into the next room where the visitors were waiting. Greeting them with her usual animation of manner, she asked Onslow for the news. “The news is,” said Onslow, “my friend Charles is undergoing conversion. We shall have him an out-and-out Secessionist before the Fourth of July.” “On what do you base your calculations?” asked Kenrick. “On the fact that for the last twelve hours I haven’t heard you call down maledictions on the Confederate cause.” “Perhaps I conclude that the better part of valor is discretion.” “No, Charles, yours is not the Falstaffian style of courage.” “Well, construe my mood as you please. Miss Tremaine, your piano stands open. Does it mean we’re to have music?” “Yes. Hasn’t the Captain told you of his meeting a young lady,—Miss Perdita Brown?” “I’ll do him the justice to say he _did_ tell me he had escorted such a one.” “What did he say of her?”