Was she to be the ransom?-was she to atone
for the loss of family fortune, family pride, family inconsistency?
kept forcing itself upon her. There was no gladness in it-no
happiness. And there was the captive, the victim of foul slavery-so
foul that hell yearns for its abettors-whose deliverance she prayed
for with her earnest soul. She knew the oppressor's grasp-she had,
with womanly pride, come forward to relieve the wronged, and she had
become sensible of the ties binding her to Clotilda. Unlike too many
of her sex, she did not suppress her natural affections; she could
not see only the slave in a disowned sister; she acknowledged the
relationship, and hastened to free her, to send her beyond slavery's
grasp, into the glad embrace of freedom.
The ceremony ends; the smiles and congratulations of friends, as
they gather round Franconia, shower upon her; she receives them
coldly, her heart has no love for them, it throbs with anxiety for
that slave whose liberty she has planned, and for whose safety she
invokes the all-protecting hand of heaven.
CHAPTER XVI.
ANOTHER PHASE OF THE PICTURE.
WHILE the ceremony we have described in the foregoing chapter was
proceeding, Clotilda, yielding to the earnest request of Franconia,
dresses herself in garments she has provided, and awaits the
commencement of the scene. A little schooner from one of the Bahama
Islands lies moored in the harbour awaiting a fair wind to return.
We need scarcely tell the reader that a plan of escape had been
previously arranged between Franconia and Maxwell; but why she took
so earnest a part in carrying it out, we must reserve for another
chapter.
Pages:
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274