Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/175

 Cassy welcomed me with a ready smile, and those caresses which a fond wife bestows so freely on the husband whom she loves. Her mistress, the day before, had given her some new clothes for the child, and she had just been dressing him out, to make the little fellow fit, she said, to see his father. She brought the boy and placed him on my knee. She praised his beauty; and with her arm about my neck, she tried to trace his father's features in the baby's face. In the full flow of a mother's fond affection she seemed unconscious and forgetful of the future; and by a thousand tender caresses, and all the little artifices of a woman's love, she sought to make me forget it too. She had but little success. The sight of that poor, smiling, helpless and unconscious child, brought back all my melancholy feelings. Yet I could not bear to disappoint in wife's hopes and efforts; and to make her think herself successful, I strove to affect a cheerfulness I did not feel.

The beauty of the day tempted us abroad. We walked among the fields and woods, carrying the child by turns. Cassy had a hundred little things to tell me of the first slight indications of intelligence which the boy was giving. She spoke with all a mother's fluency and fervor. I said but little; indeed I hardly dared to speak at all. Had I once begun, I could not have restrained myself from going on; and I did not wish to poison her pleasure, by an outpouring of that bitterness which I felt bubbling up, at the bottom of my heart.

The hours stole away insensibly, and the sun was already declining. I had my master's orders to be back that night; and it was time for me to go. I clasped the infant to my heart. I kissed Cassy's cheek and pressed her hand. She seemed not satisfied with so cold a parting; for she threw her arms about my neck and loaded me with embraces. This was so different from her usual coy and timid manner, that I was at a loss to understand it. Is it possible that she felt some instinctive presentiment of what was going to happen? Did the thought dart across her mind, that this might be our last, our final parting?