Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/144

 She heard him talking with Miss Ritty; and he had been gone but a few moments, before she entered. She began with a long string of questions about what colonel Moore had said and done; but when Cassy did not seem inclined to give her any answer, she laughed, and thanked her, and told her she need not trouble herself, for she had been peeping and listening at the key-hole, the whole time. She said, she could not imagine, why Cassy made such a fuss. In a very young girl it might be excusable; but in one as old as she was, and a married woman too, she could not understand it. Such is the morality, and such the modesty to be expected in a slave!

The poor girl was in no humor for controversy; so she listened to this ribaldry without making any answer fo it. Yet even at that moment, a faint ray of hope began to display itself. It occurred to her, that if Miss Ritty could be made sensible of the risk she ran in aiding to create herself a rival, she would not be pleased at the prospect of being perhaps supplanted in a situation, which she seemed to find so very agreeable. This idea appeared to offer some chance of gaining over Miss Ritty to aid her in escaping from Spring-Meadow; and at once, she resolved to act upon it. It was necessary to be cautious and to feel her way, lest by piquing the girl's pride, she might deprive herself of all the advantage to be gained from working upon her fears,

She approached the subject gradually, and soon placed it in a light, in which, it was plain, her companion had never viewed it. When it was first suggested to her, she expressed a deal of confidence in her own beauty, and affected to have no fears; yet it soon became obvious, that notwithstanding all her boasting, she was a good deal alarmed. Indeed it was quite impossible for her, to look her anticipated rival in the face, and not to perceive the danger. Cassy was well pleased to see the effect of her suggestions; and began to entertain some serious hopes of once more making her escape.

It was, to be sure, a miserable, and most probably an ineffectual resource, this running away. But what else could she do? What other hope was there of escaping a fate which all her womanly and all her religious feelings