She was handsomer than Rosa; and if you were to see Rosa, you would say nobody _could_ be handsomer than she is.
She was good, too.

My father was always saying she was the dearest and best wife in the world.

You don't know how he mourned when she died.
He couldn't bear to have anything moved that she had touched.

But _cher papa_ died very suddenly; and first they told us that we were very poor, and must earn our living; and then they told us that our mother was a slave, and so, according to law, we were slaves too.

They would have sold us at auction, if a gentleman who knew us when papa was alive hadn't smuggled us away privately to Nassau.