O, that she might fling herself on that strong arm and tender heart! That she might disclose to him her whole situation! Impulses, eager and tumultuous, urged her to do this. Then there was a struggle as if to keep down the ready confession. Pride battled with the feminine instinct that claimed a protector. What! This man, on whom she had no more claim than on the veriest stranger,—should she put upon him the burden of her confidence? This man who in one minute had whispered more flattering things in the ear of Laura than he had said to Clara during the whole of their acquaintance,—should she ask favors from _him_? O, if he would, by look or word, but betray that he felt an interest in her beyond that of mere friendship! But then came the frightful thought, “I am a slave!” And Clara shuddered to think that no honorable attachment between her and a gentleman could exist. “What of that? Surely I may claim from him the help which any true man ought to lend to a woman threatened with outrage. Stop there! Does not the chivalry of the plantation reverse the notions of the old knight-errants, and give heed to no damsel in distress, unless she can show free papers? Nay, will not the representative of the blood of all the cavaliers look calmly on, and smoke his cigar, while a woman is bound naked to a tree and scourged?” And then her mind ran rapidly over certain stories which a slave-girl, once temporarily hired by Mrs. Gentry, had told of the punishments of female slaves: how, for claiming too long a respite from work after childbirth, they had been “fastened up by their wrists to a beam, or to a branch of a tree, their feet barely touching the ground,” and in that position horribly scourged with a leather thong; perhaps, the father, brother, or husband of the victim being compelled to officiate as the scourger![33] “But surely this man, whose very glance seems shelter and protection,—this true and generous _gentleman_,—must belong to a very different order of chivalry from that of the Davises, the Lees, and the Toombses. Yes! I’ll stake my life he’s another kind of cavalier from those foul, obscene, and dastardly woman-whipping miscreants and scoundrels. Yes! I’ll comply with that gracious entreaty of his, ‘Tell me everything!’ I’ll confess all.” Her heart throbbed. She was on the point of uttering that one name, _Ratcliff_,—a sound that would have inspired Vance with the power and wisdom of an archangel to rescue her,—when there were voices at the door, and Laura entered, followed by Onslow. They brought with them a noise of talking and laughing. Soon Kenrick joined the party. The golden opportunity seemed to have slipped by! To Kenrick’s gaze Clara never appeared so transcendent. But there was an unwonted paleness on her cheeks; and what meant that thoughtful and serious air? For a sensitive moral barometer commend us to a lover’s heart! Of course there was music; and Clara sang. “What do you think of her voice?” asked Laura of Vance.