Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/330

, half sister of Robert Feuardent, bore no vestige of African descent, unless it was in the deep notes of her voice, pathetic and passionate in turn, or in her almost savage health and its attendant perfection of form. That one burning drop of negro blood had blighted her life; the knowledge of it had transformed the man who was her plighted husband into her destroyer. It had brought shame and sin and death to him; it had changed her from a happy, hopeful girl into a desperate and sinful woman, conscience-stricken and wellnigh a fratricide.

Madame Anna grew worse. It was evident that the fever had overcome her stout resistance. She herself saw that hope was past; and desiring to set her affairs in order, she summoned to her bedside her man of business, a mulatto who had been faithful to her even as were her new-made friends.

When she had talked long and earnestly with him she slept for a space, and then begged that she might be left alone with Therese. The interview was a long one, and lasted far into the night. Philip never knew what was said between the two erring women,—the one standing at the end of a career the saddest that falls to human lot, tarnished by a thousand sins, weighed down with the sense of the infinite woe and disgrace her life had brought upon other lives; the other