d Napoleon Chapron been interested in the study of character as deeply
as he was in his cotton and his sugarcane, he would have perceived, with
affright, the early traces of a sinful nature. But, on that point, like
his son, he was one of those trustful men who did not judge when they
loved. Moreover, Lydia and Florent, to his wounded sensibility of a
demi-pariah, formed the only pleasant corner in his life--were the fresh
and youthful comforters of his widowerhood and of his misanthropy. He
cherished them with the idolatry which all great workers entertain for
their children, which is one of the most dangerous forms of paternal
tenderness; Lydia's incipient vices were to the planter delightful
fancies! Did she lie? The excellent man exclaimed: What an imagination
she has! Was she jealous? He would sigh, pressing to his broad breast
the tiny form: How sensitive she is!... The result of that selfish
blindness--for to love children thus is to love them for one's self
and not for them--was that the girl, at the time of her entrance at
Roehampton, was spoiled in the essential traits of her character. But
she was so pretty, she owed to the singular mixture of three races
an originality of grace so seductive that only the keen glance of
a governess of genius could have discerned, beneath that exquisite
exterior, the already marked lines of her character. Such governesses
are rare, still more so at convents than elsewhere. There was none at
Roehampton when Lydia entered that pious haven which was to prove fatal
to her, for a reason precisely contrary to that which transformed
for Florent the lawns of peaceful Beaumont into a radiant paradise of
friendship.

Among the pupils with whom Lydia was to be educated were four young
girls from Philadelphia, older than the newcomer by two years, and who,
also, had left America for the first time. They brought with them the
unconquerable aversion to negro blood and that wonderful keenness
in discovering it, even in the most infinitesimal degree, which
distinguishes real Yankees. Little Lydia Chapron, having been entered
as French, they at first hesitated in the face of a suspicion speedily
converted into a certainty and that certainty into an aversion, which
they could not conceal. They would not have been children had they
not been unfeeling. They, therefore, began to offer poor Lydia petty
affronts. Convents and colleges resemble other society. There, too,
unjust contempt is like that