"Yes, I know, Minn; and I think it a very shameful practice, too. I never want to be a fashionable woman, if it is going to deprive me of performing a mother's holiest offices for my children. I'm sure after a child of mine had been reared at a black mother's breast I should feel they were black children, had black blood in their veins, and I never could feel right toward them again." "You are one in a thousand, dear Miss Della; and such feelings are right, and good, and noble. But if you ever wish to be truly a mother to your children, don't marry a fashionable man, whose pride will be to show you off all the time in gay company, and who will be always fretting to keep your beauty good. It is such husbands that make bad mothers. A woman can't be a votary of fashion and a good mother." "I never shall marry a fashionable man, Minny--you _know_ that; but when I _do_ marry I shall try and be a good, and true, and dutiful wife, nothing more. I haven't a taste for high life--that is, gay life, which has no heart in it. But, Minny, let's go back to you; I commenced about you; what made you change the subject, child?" "Did I, Miss?" "Yes. Who was your father, Minny?" Minny's cheek lost it's flush, and became pale as death. "I cannot tell you, Miss." "But you _know_." Minny made no answer, but her hands shook violently, and the braids she had just fastened fell loose again from her trembling fingers. "What ails you, Minn? why don't you answer me?" said Della, looking up earnestly at Minny, in the glass. "I never told you a lie in the world, Miss Della; and I don't answer you because I can't tell the truth now." "You _must_ tell me if you know, Minny; and you must tell the truth, too." "Oh, Miss Della," said the girl, sinking at her mistress's feet in a fit of wild weeping, "don't, don't ask me this. I never knew it myself till yesterday, and then I wrung it from my mother, who charged me, if I valued her life, never to lisp it again. It made me wretched. Oh, Miss Della, it would kill you." "Kill me? How can it affect me, silly child? What nonsense." Della lifted up the beautiful head which was bowed before her, and turned the pallid face toward her own. "Tell me, you foolish one," she persisted, her curiosity fully aroused. "I must and will know about it now;" and she stamped her little foot with an air of command, which, toward her favorite, was very rarely assumed. Minny pressed her hands, clasped one upon the other, hard against her heart, as if its throbbing was painful, and raised her eyes, full of a strange, wild light, to her mistress's face. "I would sooner die than tell you, Miss." There might have been something in that agonized look that called forth emotion, or there might have been something in that cold, fixed gaze, which stamped for the instant the father on that upturned, ashy face; for as she met the glance, Della suddenly clasped her hands to her face, and, with an exclamation of horror, fell back fainting.