Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/53

 with impatience for the hour that would permit her to throw herself into the arms of her husband, her natural protector.

Her natural protector! — alas, of what avail is the natural right of a husband to protect his wife against the assaults of a villain, who is at once her owner and his!

Such was Cassy's story; and strange as it may seem, I heard it quite unmoved. Although I held the panting, trembling, weeping narrator in my arms, I listened to her story with far less emotion, than I have since experienced in recounting it. In truth, I was prepared for it; I had anticipated it; I expected it.

I knew well that Cassy's charms were too alluring not to excite a voluptuary in whom.a long indulgence had extinguished all the better feelings, and rendered incapable of controlling himself; and to whom, neither the fear of punishment, nor the dread of public indignation, supplied the place of conscience. What else could be reasonably expected of a man, who knew well, let him proceed to what extremities he might, not only that the law would justify him, but that any body who might think of calling tins to account before the bar of public opinion, would be denounced by the public voice, as an impertinent intermeddler in the affairs of other people?

Little of paternal tenderness as colonel Moore ever showed to me, at least from the moment that he found [ knew him to be my father, 1 have too much of filial respect, to entertain the wish of misrepresenting him. Though he was of a warm and voluptuous temperament, he was naturally a good natured man; and his honor was, as I have said, unquestioned. But honor is of a very diverse character. There is honor among gentlemen, and honor among thieves; and though both these codes contain several excellent enactments, neither can fairly claim to be regarded as a perfect system of morality. Of that code in which he had been educated, colonel Moore was a strict observer. To have made an attempt on the chastity of a neighbor's wife or daughter, he would have esteemed, and so the honorary code of Virginia esteems it, an offence of the blackest dye; an offence, he well knew, to be expiated only