What would have been her feelings if she could have known
that the child for whose rescue she had sacrificed herself
would one day be free, honored, and loved in another land?
CHAPTER XVII
CLOTELLE
THE curtain rises seven years after the death of Isabella.
During that interval, Henry, finding that nothing could induce
his mother-in-law to relinquish her hold on poor little Clotelle,
and not liking to contend with one on whom a future fortune depended,
gradually lost all interest in the child, and left her to her fate.
Although Mrs. Miller treated Clotelle with a degree of harshness
scarcely equalled, when applied to one so tender in years,
still the child grew every day more beautiful, and her hair,
though kept closely cut, seemed to have improved in its soft,
silk-like appearance. Now twelve years of age, and more than
usually well-developed, her harsh old mistress began to view
her with a jealous eye.
Henry and Gertrude had just returned from Washington,
where the husband had been on his duties as a member of Congress,
and where he had remained during the preceding three years
without returning home.
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