GONE.
It had blown hard in the night, but the wind had dropped at dawning,
and now the rising sun tinted the cruel fringe of storm wrack as it
dwindled into the west.
A low, gray sky, eaten to a jagged edge as by a fire torch, hung over
the harbor.
Eastward, this sky line was broken by the spout of foam when two waves
dashed each other into spray. A heavy surf beat upon the shore. Marrion
Latham stood watching the small boats swoop up and down the emerald
valley, dipping away nor’ward under easy sail. He loved the water, and
when anything annoyed him, he had often found relief in its lullaby.
This was one time its surging sighs had not soothed him.
He must see Robert, for his home was in peril. He turned from the water
front. Slowly and deliberately he walked, every step was an effort.
He could not forget that this man, for whom he felt so much concern,
had refused to take his hand, had refused him a chance for personal
justification. All this he thought of, and while love and wounded
pride were both struggling for mastery, he reached the door where he
had once been a welcomed and an honored guest.
“Is Mr. Milburn in?” he asked of the maid who answered the bell.
“No, sir, he left this morning for Boston; will you leave a message.”
“Oh! no. I shall wire him, if you will give me his address.”
He tried so hard to speak lightly, but lamentably failed in the
attempt. Without being conscious of it he had spoken in almost an
imploring tone.
So Robert was out of his reach; what should Marrion do now? He could
not think; he had gone through so much excitement lately that his brain
felt in a confused tangle, he was unable to calculate coolly; one thing
he knew, that his mental agony was beyond endurance. In thought, word,
and deed, he had been true to Robert, but that the other might never
know until the history of man is carried from time to eternity, where
none can erase or alter it.
“Who was the gentleman?” Mrs. Milburn asked, when the servant returned.
“A friend of yours, but he wanted to see your husband. It was Mr.
Latham.”
“Say, rather, an acquaintance of mine,” was the reply.
Cherokee felt that she had no such thing as a friend. She who had been
petted and admired saw the change now; the cordial hand held back,
the friendly, confidential glance replaced by frowns of almost fierce
suspicion and reproach. She observed a gradual but marked difference in
her friends’ demeanor toward her. Her greetings were received coldly,
though sometimes with scrupulous politeness. Groups began to melt
insensibly away at her approach, or her advent was a signal for dead
silence.
The young women were frigid; the old ones were more so, and
systematically cut her dead, and were often heard to say: “They had
always thought there was something very queer about this woman.”