"`We may never meet more!' These were almost his last words. Alas! too
prophetic! Better, now, we never should. Better this than to meet
him--with her by his side--Judith Jessuron--his wife--his wife--oh!"
The last exclamation was uttered aloud, and with an undisguised accent
of anguish.
Smythje heard it, and started as he did so--letting the sun-glass fall
from his fingers.
Looking around, he perceived his companion standing apart--unheeding as
she was unheeded--with head slightly drooping, and eyes turned downward
upon the rock--her face still bearing the expression of a profound
anguish which her thoughts had called forth.
The heart of Smythje melted within him. He knew her complaint--he knew
its cure. The remedy was in his hands. Was it right any longer to
withhold it? A word from him, and that sad face would be instantly
suffused with smiles! Should that word be spoken or postponed?
Spoken! prompted humanity. Spoken! echoed Smythje's sympathetic heart.
Yes! perish the cue and the climax! Perish the fine speech and the
rehearsal with Thoms--perish everything to "relieve the deaw queetyaw
fwom the agony she is suffwing!"
With this noble resolve, the confident lover stepped up to the side of
his beloved, leaving a distance of some three feet between them. His
movements were those of a man about entering upon the performance of
some ceremonial of the grandest importance; and to Mr Smythje, in
reality, it was so.
The look of surprise with which the young Creole regarded him, neither
deterred him from proceeding, nor in anywise interfered with the air of
solemn gravity which his countenance had all at once assumed.
Bending one knee down upon the rock--where he had dropped the glass--and
placing his left hand over the region of his heart, while with the right
he had raised his hat some six inches above his perfumed curls, there
and then he was about to unburden himself of that speech, studied for
the occasion--committed to Smythje's memory, and more than a dozen times
delivered in the hearing of Thoms--there and then was he on the eve of
offering to Kate Vaughan his hand--his heart--his whole love and
estate--when just at this formidable crisis, the head and shoulders of a
man appeared above the edge of the rock, and behind, a black-plumed
beaver hat, shadowing the face of a beautiful woman!
Herbert Vaughan!--Judith Jessuron!
Volume Two, Chapter XIV.