Page:Anthony John (IA anthonyjohn00jero).pdf/197

 Young Harry, making use of all the influence he could obtain, succeeded in tracing her. She was living in the negro quarter of New Orleans, earning her living as a school teacher. She had discovered on evidence that had seemed to her to admit of no doubt that her grandmother had been a slave. It was difficult to believe. She was a beautiful, olive-skinned girl with wavy, dark brown hair and finely chiselled features. Young Harry Coomber, madly in love with her, had tried to persuade her that even if true it need not separate them. Outside America it would not matter. He would take her abroad or return with her to England. His entreaties were unavailing. She regarded herself as unclean. She had been bred to all the Southern American's hatred and horror of the negro race. Among her people the slightest taint of the "tar brush" was sufficient to condemn man or woman to life-long ostracism. She would have inflicted the same fate upon another, and a sense of justice compelled her not to shirk the punishment in her own case.

Five years later a circumstance came to light that proved the story false, and the long-delayed marriage took place quietly at the Sheriff's office of a small town in Pennsylvania.

But the memory of those five years of her life,