CHAPTER III.

"Most musical-most melancholy."-MILTON.

THE boarding-school into which Zoë was now admitted, was kept by a lady who had gained great reputation as a teacher of young girls. She was of noble descent, but inheriting from her parents more of rank than of wealth, and scorning dependence, she had resorted to education as a means of support, and had gained an honorable reputation thereby. Tall and stately in her mien, with the clear blue eyes, blonde hair, and light complexion of her country-women, with decision, high thought and power of command in every lineament of her face, and movement of her figure, Miss Ingemann might have been taken for a Volkyria, and, indeed, her pupils could not have held in higher veneration her character and acquirements had she

shown them, in legible handwriting, her certificate from Odin, that she had been of his court.

She received the little girl kindly and listened attentively to all the directions which Mr. Carlan had intrusted to the captain, as well as to his own fatherly injunction that she should have careful attention, and after his departure, seeing her look tearful and forlorn, she directed an assistant to take her to her room, to the companion who was to share it with her.

This was Hildegund, or Hilda Strophel, as she was called, the daughter of a Danish gentleman, who two years before possessed a large plantation in Santa Cruz.

He married a Creole lady of English descent, and for a time lived in great state and splendor in the island. His lands were very productive-sugar, the principal article of export, brought him large profits, and he spent his immense income in the rude magnificence, once so common among the planters-in dinners, wines, horses, equipage, rich plate, and last, but not least, in gambling. His house, large, airy, and commodious, was open to his friends, scores of whom he would welcome to his hospitality for days and weeks together, at which time his halls would echo to the sounds of music and revelry, until the night waned into early dawn. But this was not sufficient for his ambitious and pleasure-seeking wife. She was beautiful and proud, and would fain be presented at court. She, therefore, sought and easily gained her husband's consent to spend a year at Denmark. Here the gayeties and excitement of high life completely engrossed her, and when the time appointed for their return arrived, she urged delay. The idea of going back to little, contracted, quiet Santa Cruz and its limited range of social life, was dreadful to her. She pleaded one reason, and then another, to induce her husband to remain. First, her health needed the bracing air of the north, and afterwards the children must be educated; and how could she leave the darlings among

strangers? although no scruples of that kind prevented her banishing them to the mercy and to the exclusive care of servants for days and weeks together. In vain did her husband insist that his affairs required his oversight, and that he should be a ruined man, if they pursued their present course much longer: she could not be made to believe it, and so long as the money for her expenditure was forthcoming, she drove care to the winds. Her stronger will and greater force of character overruled his prudence and apprehensions of evil, and so they swept on in their wild career. This false and reckless state of things could not, of course, last forever. His manager was a crafty and rapacious man, who had an eye only to his own interests. He bribed the attorney left in charge of Mr. Strophel's business, to further his plans; so while they sent fair accounts of the great profits the estate was yielding, and money enough to blind him to the true state of things, they were exhausting the land, wearing out the negroes by cruel usage and lack of care, and in fine, feathering their own nests with the riches of the poor, simple bird who had given himself up as their prey. So one fine winter's eve, when my lady was all appareled to wait upon her Majesty, news came that he was bankrupt. What to do now was the question? Return they must, to gather up the fragments of his once splendid fortune, but how were they to live? It happened that he had influential friends at court, through whose efforts he obtained a lucrative office, just left vacant in the island, and in a week they were on their way to Santa Cruz, with many a bitter regret on the part of Mrs. Strophel, that her gay and brilliant life was comparatively at an end.

The little Hilda had just entered her sixth year, and her they left with Miss Ingemann, until her school education should be completed. She was a bright, gay little sprite, and her rosy, dimpled face and laughing blue eye reflected every emotion of her changeful spirits, so that

Miss Ingemann, when particularly gracious and condescending, would designate her as Mademoiselle Aprilis.

When Zoë entered the room, she was giving her doll, nearly as large as herself, a lesson in waltzing, scolding her in the tone and phrase caught from her dancing-master, for her imperfect attention: "Toe out, toe out. Doesn't she mean to take the steps right? Does she wish to go into the black-hole?"

At her first glance at Zoë, she stopped short, and stood in speechless amazement. She was but two when she left her birthplace, and had no recollection of the blacks or colored people, her nurse dying soon after her arrival, and although they were occasionally seen in Copenhagen, she had never happened to meet one. Zoë was no darker than many a white Creole, and she was entirely free from the most peculiar and repulsive African indications; but there was a marked difference between her countenance and that of the other girls, which struck and interested Hilda, and although thrown off her guard by surprise, she felt that, compared with the rather common-place and inexpressive features of many of them, the little stranger certainly had the advantage.

Zoë's heavy eyelids lifted, and her face brightened, as she looked at the human sunbeam before her, and after gazing straight into each other's faces for a full minute, much to the amusement of Miss Holberg, they exchanged smiles, an omen of their future friendship, and then Hilda ran off to find some of her schoolmates.

"O! if we haven't got the funniest, little dark elvo now," said she, as she danced into the general sitting room of the pupils, where a dozen or more were collected "the new scholar, whom Miss Holberg told us was to come from away off in the West Indies. Her hair is as black as jet, and all wavy; her skin is dreadfully tanned and her eyes are so mournful. I wonder if she is not one of the little Hillfolk, who never expect to go to Heaven

But she has a beautiful sweet smile. I know I shall like her; I feel already that we shall soon say thou to each other; I am so glad she is going to room with me."

"O yes, Mademoiselle Aprilis, and how long will it be before you quarrel, as you did with Rinda, and have to be separated?" said Elize; "I should advise you to be a little. less hasty in getting up your romantic friendships."

"Well, I cannot help it, if Rinda will fly off the handle like an old jacknife that is loose in the rivets, at every word that is spoken to her. I am ready to love her again, when she is not so cross and fretful."

"Who would not get out of patience with you, you little bumble-bee, buzzing about one's face and ears all the time, and such an everlasting talker too? She said she could not study, nor read, nor sew, nor do anything, you

tormented her so."

The idea of being a bumble-bee struck Hilda as so comical, that she laughed loud and long, and forthwith began to act in the character of that demonstrative insect, flying about the room with her arms extended, with a buzz equal to that of twenty of her tribe, giving this girl's cheek a tap, and that one's nose a pull, and pinching a third by way of a sting, and poking her fingers through still another's hair, until there was a general uproar and indignation meeting, when fortunately the door opened for some one to enter, and she whizzed past in a bee-line towards her own room, to see the new comer.

She found Miss Holberg engaged in unpacking and arranging Zoë's clothes, while giving an occasional direction to her about keeping them in order, she, in the meantime, sitting passive and silent on a stool, watching her and nodding assent from time to time to her suggestions.

66

"And Zoë," she said, as Hilda bounced in, you will keep your closet and drawers very neat, dear, for it is a very good habit to grow up with, and besides, with so