bride, Don Benigno is anxious that the wedding shall
take place with as little delay as possible.

Before that event, and before Don Benigno and the rest of his family
leave with me for New York, I am made acquainted with the fact, that
another marriage will be shortly celebrated in the Don's family, and
that the betrothed lady is no other than Don Benigno's adopted
daughter, the fair Ermina!

Don Benigno tells me that for certain reasons this wedding will not take
place in the Ever-faithful Isle. What those reasons are, and how my
curiosity respecting the past of the pretty mulatto girl is at last
gratified, will appear in the following brief narrative, which, as the
matter contained in it was chiefly derived from the young lady herself,
I propose to repeat as nearly as possible in her own words.

* * * * *

I was bought and paid for before I was born.

My own mother bargained for, and finally secured me, for the sum of
twenty-five dollars. A kind of speculative interest was attached to my
nativity. Had my sale not been effected previous to my appearance in the
world, I should have become the property of my mother's master, who, in
accordance with the laws of serfdom, might then dispose of me, if he
pleased, at a rate far exceeding my mother's slender savings; and, if
nature had destined me for a healthy boy instead of a girl, my value
would have been still greater.

My mother was a slave belonging to a wealthy coffee-planter. Of my
father I know little, save that he was a white man, and that being a
professed gambler and deeply in debt, he disappeared from Cuba shortly
before I was ushered into the world. His flight concerned no one more
than my mother, for he had promised to purchase her liberty for a
thousand dollars, which was the price demanded by her owner.

There was no world to censure my parent for the trouble she had brought
upon herself, because, in a slave-country, little importance is attached
to such a common occurrence as the birth of a mulatto. My mother's
master would have exhibited a similar indifference, if, indeed, he would
not have rejoiced at the event--for it added a few dollars to his
exchequer--were it not for the fact that Don Vicente had a secret motive
for great displeasure. His slave was a mulatto, belonging to the fair
class known as quadroons. My mother was a comely specimen of her race,
and Don Vicente, being well aware of this, had his own reasons f