His Other Wife: A Novel — page 301: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MISTRESS AND .MAID, 293 sideration to his client, that the prisoner was forced to rest content with the hope of invalidating such testimony as might appear on the trial. Not a syllable had yet been heard of the woman who was expected to confront him with the charge of having poisoned her, and, of course, the counsel for the prosecu- tion were inscrutable. Neither by word nor letter had the ostensible wife of the prisoner attempted to hold any communication with him. Through Mr. Dale, Croft learned that Leda preserved the severest seclusion, never leaving her own apartments, nor admitting to them a single creature, save the tall negress, who had always attended on her from her child- hood, and who had been the confidential servant of Mrs, Morgan from the time of her child’s birth, when the devotion, dignity, and faithful reticence of the slave, Roxana, had attached her Northern mistress very warmly to her. It isa notable fact that, despite the enthusiastic philan- thropy felt and professed by the Northern people (and all other anti-slavery communities) for the unhappy condition of the blacks, yet, when brought into any personal rela- tions with these slaves, the advocates of freedom and equality invariably manifested a violent, and sometimes unconquerable, aversion toward their presence or con- tiguity. It was a matter of the keenest surprise to these humane theorists if they saw a black nurse allowed to Eomichoo “Sir (E(0) 3