It ended in his making the girl Delia his housekeeper, while her child--the offspring of Adelbert Beaucaire--was brought up as a daughter.

A year or so later, the second wife gave birth to a female child, and those two girls have grown up together exactly as though they were sisters.

Haines insists that neither of them knows to this day otherwise." "But that would be simply impossible," I insisted.

"The mother would never permit." "The mother! which mother?
The slave mother could gain nothing by confession; and the Judge's wife died when her baby was less than two years old.

Delia practically mothered the both of them, and is still in complete charge of the house." "You met her ?" "She was pointed out to me--a gray-haired, dignified woman, so nearly white as scarcely to be suspected of negro blood." "Yet still a slave ?" "I cannot answer that.