Great were the rejoicings at Fort Prince George when the two
pettiaugres pulled in with the tidings that as yet the peace of the
frontier was unthreatened. The handful of troops that had garrisoned
the British fort on the verge of the Cherokee country had endured
their exile, the hardships of savage warfare, the peculiar dangers
that menaced them, the rude conditions of their environment with a
sturdy fortitude, a soldierly courage, and a long patience. But now
that their return to the provinces was imminent, preparations under
way for the evacuation of the post, marching orders expected by every
express, they could scarcely await, day by day, the approaching event.
They jealously scanned every current incident lest a reason for a
postponement lurk therein; they canvassed every item of news from the
Indian country for signs of uprising; they took cognizance of the
personal traits of the men of influence among the Cherokees, and in the
guard-room and the galleries of the barracks theorized and collogued
together on their mischief-making proclivities,--all as these tended to
affect the liberation from the wilderness. Some of the soldiers were
pathetically pessimistic, and thought death or accident would frustrate
their participation in the joyous exodus. “I’m feared _something_
will happen,” one protested. “I’m fairly feared to cross the level
parade, lest I fall down on it and break my neck.” And a forlorn
wight in hospital, who had known serious wounds, and the torture of
the small-pox, and the anguish of a broken limb, suffering now from a
touch of malarial fever, earnestly besought the chirurgeon daily to be
frank with him and let him know if his early demise would keep him here
forever.
Mervyn did not share the general eager anticipation of the return of
the expedition, and he deprecated greatly that Raymond should have been
at the commandant’s ear before he, himself, should have the opportunity
to report the destruction of the granary. That the ensign would make
the most of his supposed dereliction in the matter he did not doubt.
Since he had regained his composure and recouped his self-esteem by
the favorable reception of his suit by Miss Howard, he had begun to
realize that he had let his wounded vanity carry him too far in his
antagonism toward Raymond. In the vexatious little contretemps on the
occasion of the dinner of welcome, when, like an egregious coxcomb,
he had seemed to expect that her next words would be a practical
avowal of her preference for him, he had detected both divination and
ridicule in Raymond’s eyes. But this was an untenable cause of quarrel.
He had fallen, instead, upon the omissions of the guard report, and
he began to be painfully aware that if Captain Howard knew that
this information, on which he had based his report, had come to him
merely through the gossip of his groom, _he_ would have received the
reprimand instead of Raymond. He was particularly pleasant to Jerrold,
with that gracious unbending of the rich and highly placed, as if in
the main values of humanity these fortuitous conditions count not at
all. But Lieutenant Jerrold was well aware that as officer of the day
he had fought the fire and saved the fort in the absence of the acting
commander, and he had none of the fine-spun generosities of Raymond’s
character to induce him to disregard either a nettling fact or an
actual fault. He, too, was bland and inscrutable, and Mervyn could not
for his life divine whether Captain Howard would be satisfied with the
cursory report of his captain-lieutenant, or would he scan the reports
of each tour of service during his absence on the expedition.
To Mervyn’s amazement, the commandant met at the gates of Fort Prince
George the first intimation of the burning of the granary, and the
spirit in which Captain Howard received it might indicate that he
expected to live exclusively on Indian meal for the rest of his life.
His quick, keen glance as entering, he paused under the archway of the
gate, taking a cursory view of the whole place, fell upon a vacancy
where the gable of the granary used to show from over the sheds of
the stables. His eyes widened, the blood surged up into his cheek, he
stepped forward two paces.
“My God!” he cried. “Where’s the granary, Mervyn?”
The face of the captain-lieutenant flushed. Jerrold and Innis were
both standing by, and it was indeed hard that through no fault of his
he should be put at so gross a disadvantage.
“The granary is burned, sir,” he replied.
“Burned!” volleyed Captain Howard. “Who burned it? Was this
negligence?” he demanded, sternly.
Mervyn had a sudden monition that Jerrold and Innis were secretly
commenting on the fact which he, himself, was now contemplating
with stunned amazement, that Raymond had not made the most of his
opportunity to decry the captain-lieutenant with a very valid cause.
“Raymond should have told you,” he began.
“Raymond has been busy.” Captain Howard nodded his head succinctly.
“I thought he came here expressly for information about the fire.”
“I am not asking you why Ensign Raymond did not give me the information
he was sent to gather. I happen myself to know why. I ask you how that
granary came to be burned?”
“The lightning, sir,” said Mervyn, greatly offended by the tone of his
superior officer.
“And was it a total loss?” asked Captain Howard.
“A total loss, sir.”
Captain Howard set off at a resolute trot toward the charred remains
and stood gazing dolorously down at the blackened, fallen heap of
timbers and the pile of ashes.
The sound of his familiar voice elicited a responsive whinny of
pleasure from within the stables close at hand, where his own charger
stood at the manger, unconscious of the possibilities of famine that
hung above his high-bred head.
“What are you doing for feed?”
“Buying from the Indians of Keowee Town--paying six prices.”
Captain Howard shook his head disconsolately. During the late war the
public granaries of the Cherokees had been destroyed by the British
commands as punitive measures and the people reduced to the verge of
starvation. The scanty crop of the past summer by no means replaced
those great hoards of provisions, and in his report as to the store
of corn he would have remaining at the time of his departure he
had expressed his intention, entirely approved, to bestow it as a
parting gift upon the neighboring town of Keowee. Now he, himself,
was destitute, and how to forage his force on the march through the
wilderness to Charlestown he could not yet imagine.
Suddenly--“How did the horses stand it?” Mervyn thought the ordeal
would never end. To answer in his capacity as captain-lieutenant,
temporarily in command, these strict queries in the presence of men
who knew that he had seen naught of the event tried his nerve, his
discretion, his ingenuity to the utmost. He revolted at the mere
simulacrum of a deception, and yet he desired to report the matter to
Captain Howard when they should not be at hand to hear his superior
officer’s blunt comments. He felt that the unlucky chance owed him
this slight shield to his pride.
He had naturally expected that his report would be made at the usual
time and in the usual manner, when he could explain properly the
details and account for his absence with seemliness and dignity. He
said to himself that no one could have foreseen that instead of making
the official inspection at the regulation time the commandant would be
struck on the instant of his arrival by the absence of the granary and
fly over the whole place, peering into every nook and squawking with
excitement like some old house-keeping hen of a woman. The sight of
the vacant place where the granary should have stood seemed to affect
his nerves as an apparition might have done. He could not be through
quaking over it. Mervyn, however, gave no token of the perturbation
that filled his mind as he turned to Jerrold.
“You were at the stables, lieutenant.”
“I had considerable trouble with the horses,” said Jerrold. “They were
terrified, of course, by the noise and glare. I had them led out of the
stalls, thinking the stables might take fire.”
“Casualties?” sharply asked the captain.
“Oh, none, sir,” replied Jerrold, with dapper satisfaction. He had
managed with much address an infinite number of details, depending on
scanty resources and urgently pressed for time--“Only one horse, a good
blood bay, became restive and kicked down his stall and caught his off
hind leg in the timbers; somehow, in the mêlée it was broken, and he
had to be shot.”
“_Only_ one horse,” Captain Howard commented rebukingly. “Are we on
the eve of a march? And the war has left hardly a hoof in the whole
Cherokee country! Do you expect to foot it to Charlestown?”
Lieutenant Jerrold asserted himself. He wished to marry no one’s
handsome daughter, and he cared to play Piquet with no one’s clever
sister. He would be particular not to exceed the bounds of military
decorum, and that was his only consideration. He knew that he had
exerted himself to the utmost to save the situation, succeeding almost
beyond the possibilities, the responsibility of which devolved on
another man. “I might well have lost them all, sir. The rain had not
begun. The store-house and the armory were both on fire, I had no help
at first, for I dared not call off the main guard--you had twenty
stout fellows in the boats--and the rest of the men were asleep in
barracks; some of them were pulled out of bed by the heels. By your
leave, Captain, one horse is a small tribute to pay to such a lordly
conflagration as that.”
The commandant, open to conviction, nodded his head meditatively.
Mervyn wondered if he had not noticed the personal pronoun so obtrusive
in Jerrold’s account of the measures he had taken. Mervyn had an
ebullition of indignation against himself as he recognized his own
inmost thought. He was so proud a man he would fain stand well with
himself. Had he not been so cautious a man, so self-conscious, he
would at the moment have blurted out the fact of his absence, instead
of steeling himself against the waiting expectation, the cynical
comment in the eyes of Jerrold and Innis, and postponing the disclosure
till he was sure it could come with a good grace. And then the blunt
captain! He could not submit his pride to the causticities of Howard’s
unprepared surprise and brusque comments. He would say things for which
he would be sorry afterward, for which Mervyn would be more sorry, and
particularly that Jerrold and Innis should hear them. He was angry with
himself, nevertheless, that he should give a galvanic start as Captain
Howard’s voice, keyed to surprise and objection, struck smartly on the
air.
“Why, that gun, there,” he said, waving his arm toward one of the
cannon on the nearest bastion--“that gun has been fired!”
For the piece was run back on its chassis and stood as it was left
after the alarm. Jerrold made haste to explain that the men who were
detailed to the service of this gun--there were only a few regular
gunners in the garrison--were with the expedition. Mervyn stipulated
that as the absence of a score had left extra duty for the rest of
the garrison the position of this gun had happened to be neglected,
although it, as well as the rest, had been cleaned and reloaded.
“Reloaded! But why were they discharged?” demanded Captain Howard, with
wide eyes.
The sight of the fire naturally attracted the attention of the
Indians--Jerrold explained. They came over from Keowee in canoes by
scores. He was afraid that they would seize the opportunity of the
disaster while all were so busy with the fire to rush the gates. He
ordered the sentinels to disperse them, saying the cannon were to be
fired to appease the storm gods. Any lie might be excused--there was
such a great crowd gathered as near as the counterscarp in front of the
gates. “How many Indians had assembled there, do you think, Mervyn?”
Jerrold asked with a touch of mischief or malice.
“I don’t know; I didn’t see them,” Mervyn responded, shortly.
Captain Howard was meditating on the details.
“You must have had a devil of a time,” he said with emphasis. “Do you
know if the ladies were much frightened?”
Mervyn was silent, but Jerrold with his crisp, fresh, capable air was
ready to take the word.
“I think they knew nothing of the fire and the Cherokee demonstration
till everything was over,” he said.
“You did well--you did well!” the commandant declared, addressing no
one in particular, and Mervyn, who could hardly say, “It was not I,”
saw him, with infinite relief, turn presently from the scene of these
incidents and take his way toward his own quarters, with a belated
monition that it was now in order to greet his waiting family.
There the news met him of the notable capture in his absence, for Mrs.
Annandale had learned the particulars from her niece and was herself
blissful enough to be translated. In fact, so beaming, so softened,
so benign was she, that Captain Howard, more gratified than he would
have cared to acknowledge, could not forbear a gibe at her vicarious
happiness.
“One would think you were to be the bride, Claudia,” he said, laughing
in great good-humor.
“With the handsome young husband, and Mervyn Hall, and the Mervyn
diamonds! But it’s none too good for my treasure--the brightest, the
best, the most beautiful and winsome creature that ever stepped!” She
put her handkerchief to her eyes, for those sardonic little orbs were
full of tears.
“She is--she is indeed!” cried Captain Howard. He felt that no man
could be worthy of Arabella.
“But now, _you_ must be careful--don’t speak as if it is absolutely
settled. You know dear Arabella is a bit freakish--”
She would have said--“perverse like you,” but for the bliss that curbed
her thoughts. But indeed Captain Howard took the alarm on the instant.
“Now, Claudia,” he said with earnest, remonstrating eyes, “you are not
persuading that child into this rich marriage against her inclinations?”
Mrs. Annandale looked for a moment six feet high--so portentous was her
dignity as she drew herself up. “_I_” she said, in freezing accents,
“_persuade!_” with an infusion of contempt. “My good sir, _I_ knew
nothing whatever of his proposal of marriage, till Arabella saw fit to
confide in me!”
“I beg pardon, I am sure--” began Captain Howard.
“_I_ disregard her inclination--_I_ who have sought nothing but her
happiness since her mother’s death!” said Mrs. Annandale.
“True, true, my sister. And I always gratefully remember this.”
He crossed the room, sat down beside her, and took her hand. It was a
tiny wrinkled hand, soft and unsubstantial, suggestive of something
uncanny,--a mouse or a young chicken, that does not lend itself to
hearty pressure. Captain Howard’s gingerly touch was more as if he felt
her pulse than clasped her hand.
She permitted herself to be reconciled, so benign was her triumph.
“They settled it between them. _I_ knew nothing of it. It was during
the storm. I was not in here. I went to my room for my sal volatile
partly, and partly because I could not, without screaming, see the
lightning capering about like a streak of hell turned loose on earth,
and when I had done with my vocalizes,”--she could afford to laugh at
herself on a fair day like this--“and came back, lo! here were Corydon
and Phyllis, smiling at each other, as sentimental as you please!”
Captain Howard laughed with responsive satisfaction. It was a relief
to him to know that his beautiful daughter would be so safely settled
in the world--that her path would be smoothed by all that wealth and
station could give. He had known Mervyn all the young man’s life, and
his father and grandfather before him, and liked him well. He thought
him safe, steady, conservative, of good parts, and a capable officer.
Doubtless, however, he would sell out of the army when he should come
into the title and estate, and Captain Howard was not sorry for this,
despite his own military predilections. He was glad that Arabella’s lot
should be cast in the pleasant paths of English country life, instead
of following the British drumbeat around the world. He was sensible,
too, of a great pleasure in the fact that her beauty, her cleverness,
her careful education,--for learning was the fad of the day among women
of fashion, and Miss Howard added to considerable solid acquirements
musical and linguistic accomplishments of no mean order,--would all be
conspicuously placed in a setting worthy of their value and calculated
to enhance their lustre. She would embellish the station as no Lady
Mervyn heretofore had ever graced it. As he sat gazing, half-smiling,
into the fire, he could hear echoes from the future--“The beautiful
and gifted Lady Mervyn,” she would be called; “the clever Lady
Mervyn,”--“the fascinating and accomplished Lady Mervyn!” Life had been
good to her; the most extravagant wishes would be fulfilled--wealth and
station, love and beauty, grace and goodness would all be hers. The
father’s heart swelled with gratification and paternal pride.
“How is she freakish?” he asked, suddenly.
“She will not let it be spoken of as if it were absolutely settled. She
says she does not know him well enough. She has every opportunity to
make his acquaintance. He is at her feet all the day long.”
Only when his daughter herself spoke to him was Captain Howard’s
satisfaction dashed. He was a blunt, straightforward man, and he did
not comprehend subtleties. He only felt them.
“Did Mr. Raymond tell you about the fire?” she asked, apropos of
nothing.
When he replied that he had learned of the incident only after he had
returned to the fort, she looked at him searchingly, silently, her
hazel eyes grave and pondering as she sat beside him on the settle,
her hand in his. Then she edged closer and began to pull and plait the
bullion fringes of his nearest epaulet, the clumsy decoration of those
days, while the white lids and long dark lashes drooped half over her
pensive eyes, and a slight flush rose in her cheek.
“Did he really tell you nothing of Mr. Mervyn’s dispositions during the
fire?”
“He did not mention Mervyn’s name,” Captain Howard answered, and
he was thinking this silence significant--it intimated a sort of
professional jealousy on Raymond’s part, which was certainly an
absurd sentiment to be entertained by an ensign toward the efficiency
of a captain-lieutenant--for the management of the fire and the
interdependent details had been admirable in every way. It gave
Captain Howard special pleasure to commend this management, for he
thought that surely if she cared for Mervyn such commendation would
please her. Certainly, as he doubtless would leave the army soon, it
mattered little now, whether or not he were a capable officer, but the
commandant had enough feeling for his profession as the art of war
to greatly value efficiency in the abstract, and he had a martinet’s
stern conviction that whatever a man undertakes to do should be a manly
devoir, strictly rendered.
“Mervyn’s management of the fire and the demonstration of the Indians
was most excellent,” he said. “It was an exceedingly difficult and
nettling incident. I really should not have been surprised if a band
of Cherokees had forced their way into the parade while practically
the whole force was busy fighting the fire, and even if the Indians
had been actuated by mere curiosity in coming in, serious consequences
might have ensued, the place being at their mercy. He showed excellent
conduct--excellent.”
She stared at him with wide eyes, then her face fell unaccountably.
“And Mr. Raymond said nothing,” she faltered.
He did not understand it at the time, and afterward he pondered on the
matter in futile irritation. When the formal reports had been presented
and Mervyn had stated that in the clamors of the storm he had heard
naught of the uproar in the fort, and the officer of the day had met
the emergency as best he could, Captain Howard, deeply mortified and
greatly disillusioned, cared less for the facts than that they had been
so long withheld. It was the business of the officers on duty to deal
with the difficulties as they were presented. But he asked Mervyn
why he had not mentioned the true state of the case in the presence
of Jerrold and Innis, when the matter was being canvassed, since they
must have perceived the misunderstanding under which the commandant was
permitted to labor, and would draw most unflattering conclusions. “You
give those fellows a hank over you,” he said, curtly.
He realized this even more definitely afterward when he made his
acknowledgments to Jerrold, as he felt bound to do.
“I was under the impression that Captain Mervyn had the conduct of
the emergency,” he said, in much embarrassment. “You managed it with
excellent discretion.”
“The men responded with so much good will and alacrity, sir,” replied
Jerrold, waiving the commendation with an appropriate grace. “We needed
hearts and hands rather than a head. They deserve all the credit, for
they worked with superhuman energy. And I want to ask you, sir, now
that the subject is broached, for some little indulgence for those who
were burned in their exertions. No one is much hurt, but I thought some
little extra, to show appreciation--”
“By all means--by all means,” said the commandant, glad to be quit of
the subject.
Captain Howard perceived now that it certainly was not jealousy of
Mervyn’s exploits which had kept his name from Raymond’s lips, and
he returned unavailingly to his daughter’s strict questions as to
the young ensign’s silence on the subject, and her look of pondering
perturbation at his answer. He wondered, too, why Raymond should have
maintained this silence on a theme calculated to be of most peculiar
relish to him, considering the acrimonious disposition which Mervyn
had shown in reporting so trifling an omission in the guard report,
necessitating a reprimand, while Mervyn’s own lapse, without being his
fault in any way, was of a semi-ludicrous savor, which was not in the
least diminished by his own self-conscious efforts to ignore it. He
sent a glance of covert speculation now and again toward Raymond in the
days that ensued as the young man came and went in the routine duties
of garrison life, but saw him no more in his own parlor, and several
times Arabella openly asked what had become of Ensign Raymond.
Despite the fact that she had imperiously declared she would let
nothing be considered settled, Mervyn had contrived to give the
impression to the officers of the garrison that his suit had won
acceptance with Miss Howard. Thus it came about that when these two
walked on the ramparts together on a fair afternoon, or when lights
began to glimmer from the parlor windows in the purple dusk, there was
a realization in the mess-room that the welcome might be scant even for
well-meaning intruders, so in those precincts the cards were cut for
Loo, and the punch was brewed, and the evening spent much as before
there was ever a lovely lady and a lute’s sweet vibrations to gladden
the air at Fort Prince George.
Mrs. Annandale artfully fired the girl’s pride. Her lover with a
mingled delicacy and fervor expended his whole heart in homage. With a
dutiful throb of pleasure she marked the tender content in her father’s
face, and these quiet days in the citadel of the old frontier fort
ought to have been the happiest of her life--but yet--she wondered at
Raymond’s silence! It was too signal a disaster in the estimation of a
military man--that a garrison should fight for their lives and shelter
while their commander, for whatever cause, was perdu--for the ensign
to have forgotten to mention it. Was he so magnanimous? Her eyes dwelt
on the fire wistfully. This was not a grace that Mervyn fostered. Why
did Raymond come no more? Sometimes she looked out of the window on the
parade to mark when he passed. Once in a flutter and a flurry, when she
would not take time to think, she threw a fur wrap about her, drawn
half over her head, and stole out with Norah, wrapped in a blanket
shawl, and stood in a corner of the bastion beside the ramp that
ascended to the barbette, and watched him as he put the troops through
the manual exercise on the parade. He noticed neither of them. He was
absorbed in his work--they might both have been the laundry-maids.
Arabella was afraid of her aunt’s keen questions that night in Mrs.
Annandale’s bedroom when Norah broke forth with her gossip of the
garrison and her comments on the drill.
“Oh, faix, mem, an’ it would gladden the heart av yez ter see how
nimble the men do sthep when the drum rowls out so grand! I wonder yez
don’t come wid me an’ our young leddy to look at them, sure!”
“It will do _you_ no good to look at the men, and for me to look at
them will do _them_ no good. And a sure way to make them step nimble is
to set a mob of red-skins after them--push up that stool, girl. Art you
going to set my silk stocking on the rough stone?”
“An’ shure it’s that hot,” declared the plump, good-natured Norah,
trying its temperature with her hand, “it might bur-rn the wee, dilikit
fut av yez, mem.”
She adjusted the stool and recommenced.
“Shure, mem, I doesn’t belave thim gossoons would run fur red-skins at
their heels--the lave of ’em are Oirish!”
“And they haven’t got sense enough to run,” commented the mistress.
“What d’ye peel my hose that way for, you vixen--you’ll take the skin
as well as the stocking!”
“An’ they does the goose-sthep mos’ beautiful, mem, an’ mark time
illigint. But that was for punishment,--caught in Keowee Town, gambling
wid the Injuns. Larry O’Grady an’ a shquad war kep at ut, mem, for
hours by Ensign Raymond’s ordhers, Pat Gilligan tould me, till they wuz
fit to shed tears.”
“Shed tears--the hardened wretches!” said Mrs. Annandale, interested
nevertheless, _faute de mieux_, in the simple annals of the garrison.
For the days were monotonous, and even Arabella, who one might deem
had much to think of, were it only to join George Mervyn in planning
the alterations at Mervyn Hall and the details of her future reign,
lingered to listen beside her aunt’s fire, lounging in a great chair,
dressed in faint blue, and slipping languidly from one hand to the
other her necklace of pearls, her beautiful eyes a little distrait, a
little sad, it might seem, fixed on the glowing coals.
“Shure, mem, weepin’ is all the fashion in the garrison now. Since
Ensign Raymond shed tears in public the tale of it tickles the men so
that if a finger be p’inted at one of ’em a whole shquad av ’em ’ll
bust out sobbin’ an’ wipin’ their eyes,--but Sergeant Kelly says if
they don’t quit ut, be jabbers, he’s give ’em something to cry fur.”
“You insolent wretch!” squealed Mrs. Annandale, “how dare you say ‘be
jabbers’ in my presence?”
“Shure, mem, ’twuz Sergeant Kelly shpakin’--not me,” said Norah, well
frightened.
“Sergeant Kelly ’shpakin’ here in my room, you limb!”
But Mrs. Annandale could not divert the inquiry--she would fain expunge
the very name of Raymond from the rolls.
“How did Ensign Raymond happen to shed tears?” demanded Arabella,
stiffly.
“Shure, Miss Arabella, the sojer bhoys does say that whin the ould
jontleman preacher-man wouldn’t lave the Injuns,--an’ it’s a quare
taste in folks he have got, to be sure,--an’ the captain, with
the soft heart av him, cudn’t abide to lave him there, this young
ensign,--though if he didn’t hould his head so high, an’ look loike he
thought he was a lord or a juke, he’d be a most enticin’-faced young
man,--he was ordered to pershuade the missionary to come. An’ he just
shwooped down on the riverend man of God and bodily kidnapped him. I am
acquainted with the men that he ordhered to carry the ould jontleman to
the boat.”
“I think you are acquainted with the whole garrison,” snapped Mrs.
Annandale.
“Shure, there’s but foive other white women in the place, an’ they
are mostly old and married, an’ though I’m not called of a good favor
at home I’ll pass muster on the frontier,” and Norah simpered, and
actually tossed her head.
Mrs. Annandale would have preferred dealing with this insubordinate
levity, and vanity, and disrespect on the spot to returning to the
subject of Raymond, but the question had been Arabella’s, and the maid
did not wait for its repetition.
“An’ when they had got the cr-razy ould loon in the boat--savin’ his
honor’s riverence, but to want to stay wid thim Injuns!--he shpake up
pitiful an’ said he was ould, an’ feeble, an’ poor--or they wouldn’t
have dared to thrate him so! An’ Ensign Raymond axed his forgiveness,
an’ whin he giv it, Ensign Raymond drapped down on one knee, an’ laid
his head on the ould man’s ar-rm, an’ bust into tears! Think o’ that,
mem! The men all call him now--Ensign Babby!”
Norah lifted a fresh, smiling, plump face and Mrs. Annandale sent up a
keen, high cackle of derision. Then she stole a covert glance at her
niece. Arabella, too, was smiling as she gazed into the fire--a soft
radiance had transfigured her face. Her beautiful eyes were large,
gentle, wistful, and--since emotion was the fashion of the hour--they
were full of limpid tears, so pure, so clear, that they did not
obstruct the smile that shone through them.
Mrs. Annandale was not sentimental herself, but she was familiar with
sentiment in others, and its proclivities for the destruction of
peace. Aided by the fortuitous circumstances of the man’s absence and
Mervyn’s monopoly of Arabella’s society, she had been as thoughtful,
as far-sighted, as cautious as if she had custody of the treasure of
a kingdom, but she determined that she would be more on her guard
hereafter, and never let the mention of the man’s name intrude into
the conversation. She fell into a rage over her disrobing on slight
provocation, and hounded and vilified Norah to her pallet with such
rancor that the girl, who had been in high spirits, and felt that she
had contributed much this evening to the entertainment of her employer,
followed the lachrymose tendencies of the mode, and softly sobbed
herself to sleep.