Mildred had enjoyed her visit to Roselands but since the death of Miss Worth the atmosphere of the house had seemed somewhat lonely and depressing. So she was very glad of her uncle's invitation; which promised a change in every way delightful.
The journey was tedious and wearisome in those days, compared to what it would be now--staging across the country to the nearest point on the Mississippi, thence by steamboat to New Orleans, where they remained several weeks, Mr. Dinsmore being engaged in making necessary arrangements in regard to that portion of little Elsie's inheritance which lay in the Crescent City; then on to Viamede.
It pleased Mildred that this part of their trip was to be all the way by water, and after they entered Teche Bayou it seemed to her like a passage through fairy land, so bright were the skies, so balmy the breezes, so rich and varied was the scenery; swamps, forest, plain, gliding by in rapid succession, the eye roving over the richest vegetation; resting now upon some cool, shady dell gayly carpeted with flowers, now on a lawn covered with velvet-like grass of emerald green, and nobly shaded by magnificent oaks and magnolias, now catching sight of a lordly villa peeping through its groves of orange trees, and anon of a tall white sugar house, or a long row of cabins, the homes of the laborers.
It was a new region of country to Mr. Dinsmore as well as herself, and he remarked that he considered the sight of it a sufficient recompense of itself for the trouble and expense of the journey.
"But beside that," he added, "I have had the satisfaction of learning that the estate is even much larger than I supposed. That Scotchman was faithful to his trust; very shrewd, too, in making investments, and his death gives Horace control, during the child's minority, of a princely income."
"Then you do not regret his marriage so much as you did?" Mildred said inquiringly.
"I do not say that," was the cold, almost stern reply; and she said no more.
"I would that thou might'st ever be As beautiful as now;
That time might ever leave as free Thy yet unwritten brow." --Willis.
"When will my grandpa come?" little Elsie asked again and again, and finding that no one could tell her, she set herself to watch the passing boats, often coaxing her mammy out upon the lawn or down to the very water's edge, in her eagerness for a sight of him; her first look into the face of a relative.