and equipped as the weather directed, she exclaimed,--"where now? Miss
Snow-wreath! are you going to temper your indissolvable charms to an
April shower? or is it to hunt up some poor little refugee; who is so
unfortunate as to be minus an umbrella, that you are so bereft of your
senses, as to venture out, afoot and alone, this disagreeable morning?"

"Neither the one, nor yet the other, my fair sister," joyously replied
the Sea-flower, and she tripped down the steps, smiling upon the little
frightened rain-drops, which fell lightly upon her, from the skies, not
offering to treat them with such indecorum, as the spreading of her
umbrella, and, when Winnie called to her to come back, or if she would
venture forth, to take the carriage, she was far out of hearing. Arrived
at her point of _destination_, Natalie was so lost in admiration of the
noble illustrations of the infinite mind of man, that she had lost sight
of her object, in visiting the unknown artist, until she was awakened
from her revery, by a voice near her, and looking 'round, she discovered
a poor, dejected looking old negro woman, kneeling with her hands
clasped together, and her eyes fixed upon--Natalie followed in the
direction--it must be the beautiful Madonna! of which she had heard.
Involuntarily she assumed the position of the negress! What visions
filled her soul! flitting to and fro. The past, the present, and the
future rushed in mingled indistinctness through her mind! and over the
chaos there floated a calm, which gradually took the form of
recollections which now caused her heart to beat loudly with the
uncertainty, fraught with reality. _That night!_ came fresh again to her
memory, when she had overheard her brother's words,--"she is not my
sister by birth!" The same holy passions filled her soul, and she gazed
upon that face, the semblance of which, she had many a time, ere now,
looked upon in dreams! might they not have been waking dreams?