"It seems too plain: if there be no social sin, why fear the
degradation?" she quietly interrupts. "You cannot keep it from the
child. O, how I should like to know my strange history,
Franconia,-to know if it can be that I was born to such cruel
misfortunes, such bitter heart-achings, such gloomy forebodings. If
I were, then am I content with my lot."

Franconia listened attentively, saw the anguish that was bursting
the bounds of the unhappy woman's feelings, and interrupted by
saying, "Speak of it no more, Clotilda. Take your child; go to your
cabin. I shall stay a few days: to-morrow I will visit you there."
As she spoke, she waved her hand, bid Clotilda good night, kissing
Annette as she was led down stairs. Now alone, she begins to
contemplate the subject more deeply. "It must be wrong," she says to
herself: "but few are brought to feel it who have the power to remove
it. The poor creature seems so unhappy; and my feelings are pained
when they tell me how much she looks like me--and it must be so; for
when she sat by my side, looking in the glass the portrait of
similarity touched my feelings deeply. 'Tis not the thing for Uncle
to live in this way. Here am I, loved and beloved, with the luxury
of wealth, and friends at my pleasure; I am caressed: she is but
born a wretch to serve my Uncle's vanity; and, too, were I to
reproach him, he would laugh at what he calls our folly, our sickly
sensitiveness; he would tell me of the pleasures of southern life,
southern scenery, southern chivalry, southern refinement;--yes, he
would tell me how it were best to credit the whole to southern
liberality of custom:--so it continues! There is a principle to be
served after all: he says we are not sent into the world to
excommune ourselves from its pleasures. This may be good logic, for
I own I don't believe with those who want the world screwed up into