The Canadian Brothers; Or, The Prophecy Fulfilled Part 31

"I take it, that's not handsome. As I'm a true Tennessee man, bred and born, it aint at all hospitable to empty off a pint of raw liquor at a spell, and have not so much as a gla.s.s of methiglin to offer in return. What the h.e.l.l do you suppose we're to do tomorrow for drink, during a curst long ride through the wood, and not a house of call till nightfall along the road."

The settler drew a breath long and heavy in proportion to the draught he had swallowed, and when his lungs had again recovered their play, answered bl.u.s.teringly, in a voice that betokened incipient intoxication.

"Roar me up a saplin' Mister, but you're mighty stingy of the Wabash. I reckon as how I made you a free offer of my food, and it war'nt no fault of mine if you did'nt choose to take it. It would only have been relish for relish after all--and that's what I call fair swap."

"Well, no matter," said Jackson soothingly; "what's done can't be undone, therefore I take it its no use argufying --however, my old c.o.c.k, when next you got the neck of a canteen of mine, twixt your lips, I hope it may do the c.o.c.kles of your heart good; that's all. But lets hear how you came by them pieces of n.i.g.g.e.r's flesh, and how it is you've taken it into your head to turn squatter here. You seem," glancing around, "to have no sleeping room to spare, and one may as well sit up and chat as have one's bones bruised to squash on the hard boards."

"It's a sad tale," said the settler gruffly and with a darkening brow, "and brings bitter thoughts with it; but as the liquor has cheered me up a bit, I don't much mind if I do tell you how I skivered the varmint. Indeed," he pursued savagely, "that always gives me a pleasure to think of, for I owed them a desperate grudge--the b.l.o.o.d.y red skins and imps of h.e.l.l. I was on my way to Detroit, to see the spot once more where my poor boy Phil lay rottin', and one dark night (for I only ventured to move at night,) I came slick upon two Ingins as was lying fast asleep before their fire in a deep ravine. The one nearest to me had his face unkivered, and I knew the varmint for the tall dark Delaweer chief as made one of the party after poor Phil and me, a sight that made me thirst for the blood of the heathens as a child for mother's milk.

Well, how do you suppose I managed them. I calculate you'd never guess. Why, I stole as quiet as a fox until I got jist atween them, and then holdin' a c.o.c.ked pistol to each breast, I called out in a thunderin' voice that made the woods ring agin Kit-chimocomon, which you know, as you've been in the wars, signifies long knife or Yankee. You'd a laugh'd fit to split your sides I guess, to see the stupid stare of the devils, as startin' out of their sleep, they saw a pistol within three inches of each of'em. 'Ugh,' says they, as if they did'nt know well whether to take it as a joke or not. 'Yes, 'ugh' and be d.a.m.n'd to you,' say's I: you may go and 'ugh' in h.e.l.l next--and with that snap went the triggers, and into their curst carca.s.ses went the b.a.l.l.s. The one I killed outright but t'other the Delaweer chief, was by a sudden shift only slightly wounded, and he sprung on his feet and out with his knife. But I had a knife too, and all a disappinted father's rage to boot, so at it we' went closin' and strikin' with our knives like two fierce fiends of the forest. It was n.o.ble sport sure-LY. At last the Delaweer fell over the bleedin' body of his warrior and I top of him. As he fell the knife dropt from his hand and he could'nt reach it no how, while I still gripped mine fast. 'Ugh,' he muttered agin, as if askin'

to know what I meant to do next. 'Ugh,' and be d.a.m.n'd to you once more, say's I--and the pint of my long knife was soon buried in his black heart. Then, when I see them both dead I eat my own meal at their fire, for I was tarnation hungry, and while I was eatin' a thought came across me that it would be good fun to make smoked meat of the varmint, so when I had tucked it in purty considerably, what with hominy and dried bear's meat, moistened with a little Wabash I found in the Delaweer chief's canteen, I set to and regularly quartered them.

The trunks I left behind, but the limbs I packed up in the blankets that had been used to kiver them, I reckon; and with them slung across my shoulders, like a saddle bag across a horse, I made tracks through the swamps and the prairies for this here hut, which I know'd no livin'

soul had been nigh for many a long year. And now," he concluded with a low drunken laugh, "you've the history of the dried meat. There isn't much left but when all is gone I'm off to the wars, for I can't find no peace I reckon without my poor boy Phil." He paused a moment, and then, as if suddenly influenced by some painful recollection, he struck his hand with startling violence upon the table, and, while every feature of his iron countenance seemed worked up to a pitch of intensity, added with fearful calmness, "May G.o.d's curse light upon me if I don't have my revenge of them Granthams yet:--yes"

he continued with increased excitement of voice and manner, while he kicked one of the blazing hickory logs in the chimney with all the savageness of drunken rage, causing a mult.i.tude of sparks to spit forth as from the anvil of a smith,--"jist so would I kick them both to h.e.l.l for having murdered my poor boy."

"Why, surely, Liftenant Grantham, he can't meant you?"

abruptly questioned the Aid-de-Camp, drawing back his chair and resting the palms of his hands upon his knees, while he fixed his eye keenly and inquiringly upon Gerald.

But Gerald had no time to answer him--Scarcely had the name escaped the lips of the incautious Jackson, when a yell of exultation from the settler drew him quickly to his feet, and in the next moment he felt one hand of his enemy grappling at his throat, while the fingers of the other were rapidly insinuating themselves into the hair that shadowed one of his temples, with the evident intention to "gouge" him. Weak and emaciated as he was, Gerald was soon made sensible of the disproportion of physical strength thus suddenly brought into the struggle, and as the savage laugh of the settler, as his fingers wound themselves closer and closer within the cl.u.s.tering hair, proclaimed his advantage, he felt that his only chance of saving the threatened eye was by having recourse to some sudden and desperate attempt to free himself from the gripe of his opponent. Summoning all his strength into one vigorous effort, he rushed forward upon his enemy with such force, raising himself at the same time in a manner to throw the whole weight of his person upon him, that the latter reeled backwards several paces without the power of resistance, and falling over the table towards which he had been intentionally propelled, sank with a heavy crash to the floor, still however retaining his firm hold of his enemy and dragging him after him.

Half throttled, maddened with pain, and even more bitterly stung by a sense of the humiliating position in which he found himself, the feelings of Gerald became uncontrolable, until his anxiety to inflict a mortal injury upon his enemy became in the end as intense as that of the settler.

In their fall the table had been overturned, and with it the knife which Desborough had used with his horrid repast. As the light from the blazing fire fell upon the blade, it had once caught the una.s.sailed eye of the officer, and was the next moment clutched in his grasp.

He raised it with a determination, inspired by the agony he endured, at once to liberate himself and to avenge his father's murder, but the idea that there was something a.s.sa.s.sin-like in the act as suddenly arrested him, and ere he had time to obey a fresh impulse of his agony, the knife was forcibly stricken from his hand. A laugh of triumph burst from the lips of the half intoxicated Desborough, but it was scarcely uttered before it was succeeded by a yell of pain, and the hand that had contrived to entwine itself, with resistless force and terrible intent, in the waving hair of the youth, fell suddenly from its grasp, enabling its victim at length to free himself altogether and start once more to his feet.

Little more than a minute had been pa.s.sed in the enactment of this strange scene. The collision, the overthrow, the upraising of the knife had followed each other in such rapid succession that, until the last desperate intention of Gerald was formed, the Aid-de-Camp had not had time to interpose himself in any way between the enraged combatants. His first action had been to strike away the murderous knife with the heavy b.u.t.t of one of his pistols, the other to plant such a blow upon the "gouging"

hand of the settler from the same b.u.t.t, as effectually to compel him to relinquish his ferocious clutch. In both objects, as we have seen, he fully succeeded.

But although his right hand had been utterly disabled by the blow from Jackson's pistol, the fury of Desborough, fed as it was by the fumes of the liquor he had swallowed, was too great to render him heedful of aught but the gratification of his vengeance. Rolling rapidly over to the point where the knife had fallen he secured it in his left hand, and then, leaping nimbly to his feet, gathered himself into a spring upon his unarmed but watchful enemy. But before the bound could be taken, the active Aid-de-Camp, covering Gerald with his body and presenting a c.o.c.ked pistol, had again thwarted him in his intention.

"I say now, old c.o.c.k, you'd much better be quiet I guess, for them sort of tantrums won't suit me. If this here Liftenant killed your son why he'll answer for it later, but I can't let you murder my prisoner in that flumgustious manner. I'm responsible for him to the United States Government, therefore just drop that knife clean and slick upon the floor, and let's have no more of this nonsense for the night."

But even the c.o.c.ked pistol had not power to restrain the fierce--almost brutal--rage of the settler, whose growing intoxication added fuel to the fire which the presence of his enemy had kindled in his heart. Heedless of the determined air and threatening posture of the Aid-de-Camp, he made a bound forward, uttering a sound that resembled the roar of a wild beast rather than the cry of a human being, and struck over Jackson's shoulder at the chest of the officer. Gerald, whose watchful eye marked the danger, had however time to step back and avoid the blow.

In the next moment the Aid-de-Camp, overborne by the violence of the collision, fell heavily backwards upon the rude floor, and in his fall the pistol went off lodging the ball in the sinewy calf of Desborough's leg.

Stung with acute animal pain, the whole rage of the latter was now diverted from Gerald to the Aid-de-Camp, on whom (a.s.suming the wound to have been intentional) he threw himself with the fury of a tiger, grappling as he closed with him at his throat. But the sailor in his turn now came to the rescue of his companion, and the scene for some time, as the whole party struggled together upon the floor in the broad red glare of the wood fire, was one of fearful and desperate character. At length after an immense effort, and amid the most horrid imprecations of vengeance upon them, the officers succeeded in disarming and tying the hands of the settler behind his back, after which dragging him to a distant corner of the hut, they secured him firmly to one of the open and mis-shapen logs which composed its frame. This done, Jackson divided the little that had been left of his "Wabash" with his charge, and then stretching himself at his length, with his feet to the fire, and his saddle for a pillow, soon fell profoundly asleep.

Too much agitated by the scene which had just pa.s.sed, Gerald, although following the example of his companion, in stretching himself before the cheerful fire, was in no condition to enjoy repose. Indeed, whatever his inclination, the attempt would have been vain, for so dreadful were the denunciations of Desborough throughout the night, that sleep had no room to enter even into his thoughts. Deep and appalling were the curses and threats of vengeance which the enraged settler uttered upon all who bore the name of Grantham; and with these were mingled lamentations for his son, scarcely less revolting in their import than the curses themselves. Nor was the turbulence of the enraged man confined to mere excitement of language. His large and muscular form struggled in every direction, to free himself from the cords that secured him to the logs, and finding these too firmly bound to admit of the accomplishment of his end, he kicked his brawny feet against the floor with all the fury and impatience of a spirit, quickened into a livelier sense of restraint by the stimulus of intoxication. At length, exhausted by the efforts he had made, his struggles and his imprecations became gradually less frequent and less vigorous, until finally towards dawn they ceased altogether, and his deep and heavy breathing announced that he slept.

Accustomed to rise with the dawn, the Aid-de-Camp was not long after its appearance, in shaking off the slumber in which he had so profoundly indulged. The first object that met his eye as he raised himself up in a sitting posture from his rude bed, was Gerald stooping over the sleeping Desborough, one hand reposing upon his chest, the other holding the knife already alluded to, while every feature of his face was kindled into loathing and abhorrence of his prostrate and sleeping enemy. Startled by the expression he read there, and with the occurrences of the past night rushing forcibly upon his memory, the Aid-de-Camp called quickly out, "Hold, Liftenant Grantham.

Well, as I'm a true Tennessee man, bred and born, may I be most especially d----d, if I'd a thought you'd do so foul a deed. What! a.s.sa.s.sinate a sleeping drunken man?"

"a.s.sa.s.sinate! Captain Jackson," repeated Gerald, raising himself to his full height, while a crimson flush of indignation succeeded to the deadly paleness which had overspread his cheek.

"Yes, a.s.sa.s.sinate," returned the Aid-de-Camp, fixing his eye upon that of his prisoner, yet without perceiving that it quailed under his penetrating glance. "It's an ugly word, I reckon, for you to hear, as it is for me to speak; but your quarrel last night--your fix just now-- that knife,--Liftenant Grantham," and he pointed to the blade which still remained in the grasp of the accused.

"Surely these things speak for themselves, and though the fellow has swallowed off all my Wabash, and be d----d to him, (making a fruitless attempt to extract a few drops from his canteen,) still I shouldn't like to see him murdered in that sort of way."

"I cannot blame you, Captain Jackson," said Gerald calmly, his features resuming their pallid hue. "These appearances, I grant, might justify the suspicion, horrible as it is, in one who had known more of me than yourself; but was a.s.sa.s.sination even a virtue, worlds would not tempt me to a.s.sa.s.sinate that man--wretch though he be--or even to slay him in fair and open combat."

"Then, I calculate, one night has made a pretty considerable change in your feelings, Liftenant," retorted the Aid-de- Camp. "You were both ready enough to go at it last night, when I knocked the knife out of your fist, and broke the knuckles of his gouging hand."

"I confess," said Gerald, again coloring, "that excessive pain made me wild, and I should have been tempted to have had recourse to any means to thwart him in his diabolical purpose. As you have said, however, the past night has effected a change in my feelings towards the man, and death from my hand, under any circ.u.mstances, is the last thing he has now to apprehend." Gerald sank his head upon his chest, and sighed bitterly.

"Well," said Jackson, "all this is queer enough; but what were you doing standing over the man just now with that knife, if it was not to harm him? And as for your countenance, it scowled so savage and pa.s.sionate, I was almost afraid to look at it myself."

"My motive for the action I must beg you to excuse my entering upon," replied Gerald. "Of this, however, be a.s.sured, Captain Jackson, that I had no intention to injure yon sleeping villain. On the word of an officer and a gentleman, and by the kindness you have shown me on all occasions since our journey commenced, do I solemnly a.s.sure you this is the fact."

"And on the word of an officer, and a true Tennessee man, bred and born, I am bound to believe you," returned the American, much affected. "A man that could fight so wickedly in the field would never find heart, I reckon, to stick an enemy in the dark. No, Liftenant Grantham, you were not born to be an a.s.sa.s.sin. And now let's be starting--the day has already broke."

"And yet," returned Gerald, with a smile of bitter melancholy, as they hurried towards the spot where they had left their horses, "if any man ever had reason to act so as to merit the imputation of being such, I have.

In that savage woodsman, Captain Jackson, you have beheld the murderer--the self acknowledged murderer of my father."

"G.o.d bless my soul!" cried Jackson, dropping the saddle which he carried, and standing still with very amazement.

"A pretty fix I've got into, to be sure. Here's one man accuses another of murdering his son, and t'other, by way of quits, accuses him, in his turn, of murdering his father. Why, which am I to believe?"

"Which you please, Captain Jackson," said the sailor coolly, yet painedly; and he moved forward in pursuit of his horse.

"Nay, Liftenant Grantham," said the Aid-de-Camp, who had again resumed his burden, and was speedily at the side of his companion, "don't be offended. I've no doubt the thing's as you say, but you must make allowance for my ideas, never too much of the brightest, being conglomerated, after a fashion, by what I have seen and heard, since we let loose our horses last night upon this prairie."

"I am not offended, only hurt," replied Gerald, shaking the hand that was cordially tendered to him; "hurt that you should doubt my word, or attach any thing to the a.s.sertion of that man beyond the mere ravings of a savage and diseased spirit. Justice to myself demands that I should explain every thing in detail."

"Now that's what I call all right and proper," returned the Aid-de-Camp, "and should be done both for your sake and mine; but we will leave it till we get once more upon the road and in sight of a tavern, for its dry work talking and listening without even so much as a gum tickler of the Wabash to moisten one's clay."

They found their horses not far from the spot where they had been left on the preceding night, and these being speedily untethered and saddled, the travellers again pursued their route towards the capital of the State in which they found themselves. As they pa.s.sed the hut, which had been the scene of so much excitement to both, the voice of Desborough whom they had left fast asleep, was heard venting curses and imprecations upon them both, for having left him there to starve, bound and incapable of aiding himself. Wretch as the settler was, Gerald could not reconcile to himself the thought of his being left to perish thus miserably, and he entreated the Aid-de-Camp to enter and divide the cords. But Jackson declared this to be impolitic, urging as a powerful reason for declining, the probability of his having fire arms in the hut, with which (if released,) he might follow and overtake them in their route, and sacrifice one or the other to his vengeance--an object which it would be easy to accomplish without his ever being detected.

However, that the villain might have sustenance until some chance traveller should come later to his a.s.sistance, or he could manage to get rid of his bonds himself (which he might do in time) he consented to place within his reach all the dried meat that had been left of his Indian foes, together with a pail of water--the latter by way of punishment for having swilled away at his Wabash in the ungracious manner he had.

While Jackson was busied in this office of questionable charity, the rage and disappointment of the settler surpa.s.sed what it had hitherto been. Each vein of his dark brow rose distinctly and swelling from its surface, and he kicked and stamped with a fury that proclaimed the bitter tempest raging in his soul. When the Aid-de-Camp had again mounted, his shrieks and execrations became piercing, and for many minutes after they had entered into the heart of the forest in which the hut was situated, the shrill sounds continued to ring upon their ears in accents so fearful, that each felt a sensible relief when they were heard no more.

On the evening of the third day after this event, Jackson and our hero, between whom a long explanation on the subject of the settler had taken place, alighted at the door of the princ.i.p.al inn in Frankfort, the capital of Kentucky, which was their ultimate destination. To mine host Gerald was introduced by his escort with the formality usual on such occasions in America, and with the earnest recommendation to that most respectable personage that, as his own friend, as well as that of Colonel Forrester, every indulgence should be shown to the prisoner, that was not inconsistent with his position.

CHAPTER XI.

Few situations in life are less enviable than that of the isolated prisoner of war. Far from the home of his affections, and compelled by the absence of all other companionship, to mix with those who, in manners, feelings, and national characteristics, form, as it were, a race apart from himself, his recollections, already sufficiently embittered by the depressing sense of captivity, are hourly awakened by some rude contrast wounding to his sensibilities, and even though no source of graver irritation should exist, a thousand petty annoyances, incident to the position, are magnified by chagrin from mole-hills into mountains. Such, however, would be the effect produced on one only, who, thrown by the accident of war into the situation of a captive, should have no grief more profound, no sorrow deeper seated than what arose from the being severed from old, and a.s.sociated with new and undesired ties; one to whom life was full of the fairest buds of promise, and whose impatience of the present was only a burning desire to enter upon the future. Not so with Gerald Grantham. Time, place, circ.u.mstance, condition, were alike the same--alike indifferent to him. In the recollections of the scenes he had so lately quitted, and in which his fairer and unruffled boyhood had been pa.s.sed, he took no pleasure, while the future was so enshrouded in gloom that he shrank from its very contemplation. So far from trying to wring consolation from circ.u.mstances, his object was to stupify recollection to the uttermost. He would fain have shut out both the past and the future, contenting himself as he might with the present, but the thing was impossible.

The worm had eaten into his heart, and its gnawings were too painful, not poignantly to remind him of the manner in which it had been engendered.

Upwards of a fortnight had elapsed since his arrival, and yet, although Captain Jackson, prior to his return to Sandusky, had personally introduced him to many highly respectable families in Frankfort, he uniformly abstained from cultivating their acquaintance, until at length he was, naturally enough, p.r.o.nounced to be a most disagreeable specimen of a British officer. Even with the inmates of the hotel, many of whom were officers of his own age, and with whom he constantly sat down to the ordinary, he avoided every thing approaching to intimacy--satisfying himself merely with discharging his share of the commonest courtesies of life. They thought it pride--it was but an effect--an irremediable effect of the utter sinking of his sad and broken spirit. The only distraction in which he eventually took pleasure, or sought to indulge, was rambling through the wild pa.s.ses of the chain of wooded hills, which almost encircles the Kentuckian capital, and extends for a considerable distance in a westerly direction. The dense gloom of these narrow vallies he had remarked on his entrance by the same route, and feeling them more in unison with his sick mind than the hum and bustle of a city, which offered nothing in common with his sympathies, he now frequently pa.s.sed a great portion of the day in threading their mazes--returning however, at a certain hour to his hotel, conformably with the terms of his parole.

On one occasion, tempted by the mellow beauty of the season (it was now the beginning of October) he had strayed so far, and through pa.s.ses so unknown to him, that when the fast advancing evening warned him of the necessity of returning, he found he had utterly lost his way. Abstracted as he usually was, he had yet reflection enough to understand that his parole of honor required he should be at his hotel at an hour, which it would put his speed to the proof to accomplish. Despairing of finding his way by the circuitous route he had originally taken, and the proper clue to which he had moreover lost, he determined, familiar as he was with the general bearings of the capital, to effect his return in a direct line across the chain of hills already alluded to. The deepening shadows of the wild scene, as he proposed to ascend that immediately before him, told that the sun had sunk beneath the horizon, and when he gained its summit, the last faint corruscations of light were pa.s.sing rapidly away in the west. Still, by the indistinct twilight he could perceive that at his feet lay a small valley, completely hemmed in by the circular ridge on which he stood. This traversed, it was but to ascend the opposite section of the ridge, and his destination would be gained. Unlike the narrow rocky pa.s.ses, which divided the hills in every other direction, in which he had previously wandered, this valley was covered with a luxuriant verdure, and upon this the feet of Gerald moved inaudibly even to himself. As he advanced more into the centre of the little plain, he thought he could perceive, at its extremity on the right, the dark outline of a building--apparently a dwelling house--and while he yet hesitated, whether he should approach it and inquire his most direct way to the town, a light suddenly appeared at that point of the valley for which he was already making. A few minutes sufficed to bring him to the spot whence the light had issued. It was a small circular building, possibly intended for a summer-house, but more resembling a temple in its construction, and so closely bordering upon the forest ridge, by a portion of the foliage by which it had previously been concealed, as to be almost confounded with it. It was furnished with a single window, the same through which the light now issued, and this narrow, elongated, and studded with iron bars, was so placed as to prevent one even taller than our hero from gazing into the interior, without the aid of some elevation. But Gerald, independently of his anxiety to reach the town in time to prevent comment upon his absence, had no desire to occupy himself with subjects foreign to his object.

Curiosity was a feeling dead within his bosom, and he was preparing, without once staying his course, to ascend the ridge at the side of the temple, when he fancied he heard a suppressed groan, as of one suffering from intense agony--Not the groan, but the peculiar tone in which it was uttered, arrested his attention, and excited a vague yet stirring interest in his breast. On approaching closer to the temple, he found that at its immediate bas.e.m.e.nt the earth had been thrown up into a sort of mound, which so elevated the footing as to admit of his reaching the bars of the window with his hands. Active as we have elsewhere shown him to be, he was not long in obtaining a full view of the interior, when a scene met his eye which rivetted him, as well it might, in utter astonishment.

Upon the rude uncarpeted floor knelt a female, who, with clasped and uplifted hands, had her eyes fixed upon a portrait that hung suspended from the opposite wall--her figure, clad in a loose robe of black, developing by its att.i.tude a contour of such rich and symmetrical proportion as might be difficult for the imagination to embody.

And who was the being upon whom his each excited sense now lingered with an admiration little short of idolatry?

One whom, a moment before, he believed to be still far distant, whom he had only a few months previously fled from, as from a pestilence, and whom he had solemnly sworn never to behold again, yet whom he continued to love with a pa.s.sion that defied every effort of his judgment to subdue, making his life a wilderness--Matilda Montgomerie--And if her beauty had THEN had such surpa.s.sing influence over his soul, what was not its effect when he beheld her NOW, every grace of womanhood exhibited in a manner to excite admiration the most intense!

It would he vain to describe all that pa.s.sed through the mind of Gerald Grantham, while he thus gazed upon her whose beauty was the rock on which his happiness had been wrecked. His first impulse had been to fly, but the fascination which rivetted him to the window deprived him of all power until eventually, of all the host of feelings that had crowded tumultuously upon his heart, pa.s.sion alone remained triumphant. Unable longer to control his impatience, he was on the point of quitting his station, for the purpose of knocking and obtaining admission by a door which he saw opposite to him, when a sudden change in the att.i.tude of Matilda arrested the movement.

She had risen, and with her long and dark hair floating over her white shoulders, now advanced towards the portrait, on which her gaze had hitherto been so repeatedly turned. This was so placed that Gerald had not previously an opportunity of remarking more than the indistinct outline, which proved it to represent a human figure; but as she for a moment raised the light with one hand, while with the other she covered it with a veil which had been drawn aside, he distinctly saw that it was the portrait of an officer dressed in the American uniform; and it even occurred to him that he had before seen the face, although, in his then excited state he could not recollect where. Even had he been inclined to tax his memory, the effort would have been impracticable, for another direction was now given to his interest.

On the left, and close under the window, stood a rude sofa and ruder table, the only pieces of furniture which Gerald could observe within the temple. Upon the former Matilda now reclined herself, and placing the candle upon the table at her side, proceeded to unfold and peruse a letter which she had previously taken from her pocket book. The same unconsciousness of observation inducing the same unstudiedness of action, the whole disposition of the form bore a character of voluptuousness, which the presumed isolation of her who thus exhibited herself, a model of living grace, alone could justify. But although the form was full of the eloquence of pa.s.sion, one had but to turn to the pale and severe face, to find there was no corresponding expression in the heart. As heretofore, the brow of the American wore a cast of thought--only deeper, more decided--and even while her dark eyes flashed fire, as if in disappointment and anger at sundry pa.s.sages in the letter over which she lingered, not once did the slightest color tinge her cheek, or the gloom dissipate itself from that cold brow. Emotion she felt, for this her heaving bosom and occasionally compressed lip betokened. Yet never was contrast more marked than that between the person and the face of Matilda Montgomerie, as Gerald Grantham then beheld her.