Franconia listened attentively, saw the anguish that was bursting the bounds of the unhappy woman’s feelings, and interrupted by saying, “Speak of it no more, Clotilda.  Take your child; go to your cabin.  I shall stay a few days:  to-morrow I will visit you there.”  As she spoke, she waved her hand, bid Clotilda good night, kissing Annette as she was led down stairs.  Now alone, she begins to contemplate the subject more deeply.  “It must be wrong,” she says to herself:  “but few are brought to feel it who have the power to remove it.  The poor creature seems so unhappy; and my feelings are pained when they tell me how much she looks like me—­and it must be so; for when she sat by my side, looking in the glass the portrait of similarity touched my feelings deeply.  ’Tis not the thing for Uncle to live in this way.  Here am I, loved and beloved, with the luxury of wealth, and friends at my pleasure; I am caressed:  she is but born a wretch to serve my Uncle’s vanity; and, too, were I to reproach him, he would laugh at what he calls our folly, our sickly sensitiveness; he would tell me of the pleasures of southern life, southern scenery, southern chivalry, southern refinement;—­yes, he would tell me how it were best to credit the whole to southern liberality of custom:—­so it continues!  There is a principle to be served after all:  he says we are not sent into the world to excommune ourselves from its pleasures.  This may be good logic, for I own I don’t believe with those who want the world screwed up into a religious vice; but pleasure is divided into so many different qualities, one hardly knows which suits best now-a-days.  Philosophers say we should avoid making pleasure of that which can give pain to others; but philosophers say so many things, and give so much advice that we never think of following.  Uncle has a standard of his own.  I do, however, wish southern society would be more circumspect, looking upon morality in its proper light.  Its all doubtful! doubtful! doubtful!  There is Elder Pemberton Praiseworthy; he preaches, preaches, preaches!—­his preaching is to live, not to die by.  I do pity those poor negroes, who, notwithstanding their impenetrable heads, are bored to death every Sunday with that selfsame sermon.  Such preaching, such strained effort, such machinery to make men pious,—­it’s as soulless as a well.  I don’t wonder the world has got to be so very wicked, when the wickedness of the slavery church has become so sublime.  And there’s Uncle, too,—­he’s been affected just in that way; hearing pious discourses to uphold that which in his soul he knew to be the heaviest wickedness the world groaned under, he has come to look upon religion as if it were a commodity too stale for him.  He sees the minister of God’s Word a mere machine of task, paid to do a certain amount of talking to negroes, endeavouring to impress their simple minds with the belief that it is God’s will they should be slaves.  And this is all for necessity’s sake!” In this musing mood she sits rocking in her chair, until at length, overcome with the heat, she reclines her head against the cushion, resigning herself to the soothing embrace of sweet sleep.