and the more enduring that they seemed so hopeless and so thrown away.
I would not have it supposed, however, that Mademoiselle de Montmirail was a foolish love-sick maiden, who allowed her fancies to become the daily business of her life. On the contrary, she went through her duties scrupulously, making for herself occupation where she did not find it, helping her mother, working, reading, playing, improving her mind, and doing all she could for the negroes on the estate, but tinging everything unconsciously, whether of joy or sorrow, trouble or pleasure, with the rosy light of a love she had conceived without reason, cherished without reflection, and now brooded over without hope, in the depths of her own heart.
But although the welfare of the slaves afforded her continual occupation, and probably prevented her becoming utterly wearied and overpowered by the sameness of her daily life, their wilfulness, their obstinacy, their petulant opposition to every experiment she was disposed to try for their moral and physical benefit, occasioned her many an hour of vexation and depression. Above all, the frequency of corporal punishment, a necessity of which she was dimly conscious, but would by no means permit herself to acknowledge, cut her to the heart. Silently and earnestly she would think over the problem, to leave it unsolved at last, because she could not but admit that the dictates of her feelings were opposed to the conclusions of her reason. Then she would wish she had absolute power on the plantation, would form vague schemes for the enlightenment of their own people and the enfranchisement of every negro as he landed, till, having once entered on the region of romance, she would pursue her journey to its usual termination, and see herself making the happiness of every one about her, none the less earnestly that the desire of her own heart was granted, her schemes, her labours, all her thoughts and feelings shared by the Grey Musketeer, whom yet it seemed so improbable she was ever to see again.
It wanted an hour of sunset. The evening breeze had set in with a refreshing breath that fluttered the skirt of her white muslin dress and the pink ribbons on her wide straw hat, as Mademoiselle de Montmirail strolled towards the
