He had for many years been an intimate friend
of Colonel Dumont, and was a legatee in his will to a liberal amount. A
constant visitor in the family, its spiritual adviser and comforter, he
had possessed the unlimited confidence of the late planter and his
daughter. To him the whole clause relating to Emily seemed like a
falsehood. Pure and holy in his own character, it was beyond his
conception that a man of Colonel Dumont's lofty and Christian views
could have lived so many years in the practice of this deception. He had
no means of disproving the illegitimacy of Emily. The family had been
unknown to him at the period of her birth. The house-servants, with the
exception of Hatchie, were all younger than Emily. Then, the statement
was made in the will, and was, therefore, the statement of Colonel
Dumont himself,--for the genuineness of the will he did not call in
question. In accordance with his general character, her father had
manumitted her, and left her a competence. From this clause he inferred
that her father intended to place her beyond the reach of harm, and
beyond the possibility of ever being reduced to the degraded condition
so often the lot of the quadroon at the South.
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