Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/52

 he had looked about, but did not see any body who was worthy of her; and, on the whole — he had concluded to take her himself.

This he said with a tone of tenderness, which no doubt, he meant to be irresistible. To many women, in Cassy's situation, it would have been so. They would have esteemed themselves highly honored by their master's notice, and would have felt not a little flattered, by the delicate terms under which he concealed the real character of his proposal. But she — poor child — heard him with shame and dread; and was ready, she told me, to sink into the earth, with terror and dismay. In relating it, she blushed — she hesitated — she shuddered — her breathing became short and quick — she clung to me, as if some visible image of horror were present before her, and bringing her lips close to my ear, she exclaimed in a trembling and scarcely audible whisper — "Oh Archy! — and he my father!"

Colonel Moore, she believed, could not have misunderstood the feelings with which she listened to his offer. But if so, he disregarded them; for he proceeded to enumerate all the advantages she would derive from this connexion, and strove to tempt her by promises of idleness and finery. She stood with her eyes upon the floor, and only answered him by sobs and tears, which she strove in vain to suppress. Upon this, colonel Moore in a tone of pique and displeasure, told her "not to be a fool;" and catching one of her hands in his, he threw his arm about her waist, and bade her not provoke him by a useless resistance. She uttered a scream of surprise and terror, and sunk at his feet. At that moment, the sound of the carriage wheels fell, she said, like heavenly music on her ear. Her master heard it too; for he let go his grasp, and muttering something about another time, hastily left the room. She remained almost senseless on the floor, till the sound of her mistress's footsteps in the passage, recalled her to herself. The rest of the afternoon and evening, she had passed, she hardly knew how. Her head, she told me, was dizzy; a cloud swam before her eyes; and she had hardly been sensible of any thing but a painful feeling of languor and oppression. She had not dared to leave her mistress's room; and had waited