Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/157

 that a slave could possibly be endowed with the slightest particle of that virtue, of which the free women of Virginia boast the exclusive possession. Full of this notion, she judged it highly improbable, whatever merit Cassy might pretend to claim, that she had actually resisted the importunities and solicitations of so very seducing a fellow as Mr Proctor; and filled with all the spite and fury of female jealousy, she delighted herself with tormenting the object of her suspicions. Mrs Proctor, with all her merit, had one little foible which, most likely, she had adopted out of compliment to her husband. She thought a daily dram of whiskey necessary to keep off the fever and ague; and when through inadvertence, as sometimes would happen, she doubled the dose, it seemed to give a new edge to the natural keenness of her temper. On these occasions, she plied both words and blows with a fearful energy; and though perhaps it were difficult to say which of the two was most to be dreaded, both together they were enough to exhaust the patience of a saint.

Poor Cassy could discover no means of delivering herself from this complication of miseries, under which she was ready to sink, when she was most unexpectedly relieved, by the unsolicited interference of a couple of Mr Proctor's neighbors. They were men of leisure like him; like him too, they were of good families, and one of them had received an excellent education, and was more or less distantly connected with several of the most distinguished people in the state. But a course of reckless dissipation had long ago stripped them of such property as they had inherited, and reduced them to live by their wits; which they exercised in a sort of partnership, principally on the race-course and at the gaming-table.

These two speculating gentlemen were on terms of intimacy with Mr Proctor, and they knew that he had a free woman, for such they supposed Cassy to be, living at his house. In common with most Virginians, they considered the existence of a class of freed people as a great social annoyance, and likely enough in the end, seriously to endanger those 'sacred rights of property,' in defence of which there is nothing, which a true-born son of liberty