"Duty?" thought Vesta. "That is a reposeful word, better than Love. Mr. Milburn," she said aloud, "how is it my duty to do what you ask?"

"I think I perceive that you have a loyal heart, a conscientiousness that deceit cannot even approach. Something has already made you slow to marriage, else, with your wonders, I would not have had the chance to be now rejected by you. Marriage has become too formidable, perhaps, to you, by the purity of your heart, the more so because you looked upon it to be your destiny. It is your fate, but you contend against it. Look upon it, then, as a duty, such as you expect in others - in your slave maid, for instance."

"Alas!" Vesta said, "she may marry freely. I am the slave."

"No, Miss Vesta, she has been free, but, sold among strangers with your father's effects, will feel so perishing for sympathy and protection that love, in whatever ugly form it comes, will be God's blessing to her poor heart. What you repel in the revulsion of fortune - the yoke of a husband - millions of women have bent to as if it was the very rainbow of promise set in heaven."

"How do you know so much of women's trials, Mr. Milburn? Have you had sisters, or other ladies to woo?"

"I have seen human nature in my little shop, not, like your rare nature, refined by happy fortune and descent, but of moderate kind, and struggling downward like a wounded eagle. They have come to me at first for cheaper articles of necessity or smaller portions than other stores would sell, looking on me with contempt. At last they have sacrificed their last slave, their last pair of shoes, and, when it was too late, their false pride has surrendered to shelter under a negro's hut, or dance barefooted in my store for a cup of whiskey."

"Sir," exclaimed Vesta indignantly, rising from her rocker, "do you set this warning for me?"

As she rose Meshach Milburn thought his wealth was merely pebbles and shells to her perfection, now animated with a queen's spirit.

"Miss Vesta," he said, "pardon me, but I have just issued from many generations of forest poverty, and knowing how hard it is to break that thraldom, I would stop you from taking the first step towards it. The bloom upon your cheek, the mould you are the product of without flaw, the chaste lady's tastes and thoughts, and inborn strength and joy, are the work of God's favor to your family for generations. That favor he continues in laying those family burdens on another's shoulders, to spare you the toil and care, anxiety and slow decay, that this violent change of circumstances means. It would be a sin to relapse from this perfection to that penury."

"I cannot see that honorable poverty would make me less a woman," exclaimed Vesta.

"You do not dread poverty because you do not know it," Milburn continued. "It grows in this region like the old field-pines and little oaks over a neglected farm. Once there was a court-house settlement on Dividing Creek, where justice, eloquence, talent, wit, and heroism made the social centre of two counties, but they moved the court-house and the forest speedily choked the spot. Now not an echo lingers of that former glory. You can save your house from being swallowed up in the forest."