new happiness;--beyond these lay a long period of humiliation, the sequel
of a terrible disaster. How bright and sunny had her childhood been, how
delightful her early youth! For long years of her life she had waked
every morning to new joys, and gone to rest every evening with sincere
and fervent thanksgivings, that had welled from her soul as freely and
naturally as perfume from a rose. How often had she shaken her head in
perplexed unbelief when she heard life spoken of as a vale of sorrows,
and the lot of man bewailed as lamentable. Now she knew better; and in
many a lonely hour, in many a sleepless night, she had asked herself
whether He could, indeed, be a kind and fatherly-loving God who could let
a child be born and grow up, and fill its soul with every hope, and then
bereave it of everything that was dear and desirable--even of hope.

But the hapless girl had been piously brought up; she could still believe
and pray; and lately it had seemed as though Heaven would grant that for
which her tender heart most longed: the love of a beloved and love-worthy
man. And now--now?

There she stood with an inconsolable sense of bereavement--empty-hearted;
and if she had been miserable before Orion's return, now she was far more
so; for whereas she had then been lonely she was now defrauded--she, the
daughter of Thomas, the relation and inmate of the wealthiest house in
the country; and close to her, from the rough hewn, dirty dyers' sheds
such clear and happy laughter rang out from a troop of wretched slave
wenches, always liable to the blows of the overseer's rod, that she could
not help listening and turning to look at the girls on whom such an
overflow of high spirits and light-heartedness was bestowed.

A large party had collected under the wide palm-thatched roof of the
dyeing shed-pretty and ugly, brown and fair, tall and short; some upright