Still he did not
recognise her,--toilet had changed her for another being; but she had
courted self-respect rather than yielded to degradation. Again she
made signs to attract his attention; she passed and repassed him,
and failed. Have I thus changed, she thought to herself.
At length she succeeded in attracting his attention; she drew him
aside, then to her chamber. In it she disclosed her touching
narrative, unfolded her sorrows, appealed to him with tears in her
eyes to procure her freedom and restore her to her rights. Her story
enlisted the better feelings of a man, while her self-respect, the
earnestness with which she pleaded her deliverance, and the
heartlessness of the act, strongly rebuked the levity of those who
had made her an orphan outcast in her own village. She was then in
the theatre of vice, surrounded by its allurements, consigned to its
degradation, a prey to libertinism-yet respecting herself. The
object of his visit among the denizens was changed to a higher
mission, a duty which he owed to his moral life,--to his own
manliness. He promised his mediation to better her eventful and
mysterious life, to be a friend to her; and nobly did he keep his
promise. On the following day he took measures for her rescue, and
though several attempts were made to wrest her from him, and the
mendacity of slave-dealers summoned to effect it, he had the
satisfaction of seeing her restored to her native village,--to
freedom, to respectability.
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