“Indade I do, so I do!”
“Why do you think so?” Sam asked, a tinge of annoyance at Smith’s persistence still appearing in the manner of asking.
“Isn’t she an angel? An’ it’s only the divil cud sipporate an angel from her husband. Sure, man, dear, what more do yees want to prove it?”
A twitching of Virginia’s eyelids at that moment caught Sam’s attention. It was nature’s first harbinger of approaching consciousness. He held up his hand for Smith to be silent. The twitching, however, ceased, and her eyelid remaining closed, again became motionless.
“A false alarm!” he muttered, and proceeded to chafe her hands more industriously than before. It was evident that Sam liked the occupation; for this young lady had unconsciously woven a mesh of enthralling servitude about his heart, and his idolizing; passionate fondness had at last been rewarded by unexpectedly finding himself permitted to caress her at will; to stroke her hair, to contemplate her fair face, to press her hands between his own.
Sam shrewdly suspected that Virginia was somehow the cause of Thorpe’s estrangement from his wife, but wherefore and why, were parts that she alone could explain, and her lips were sealed.
That she was also mysteriously connected with the abduction of the child, he felt was a moral certainty. And her meeting with the Italian in the lonely park at dead of night could have offered no other solution. It had acted as a temporary restraining factor upon the ardor of his love and admiration. But now, as she lay so still and insensible in his care and protection; now, as he gazed on her fair features, all his doubts of her chastity and loyalty to those she loved vanished, and an all conquering fondness suddenly burst in a flood of radiance upon him, sweeping away all his misgivings before it, irresistible and impetuous as the flight of an avalanche.
It was very quiet at that moment; so still that the rippling water, as it lapped along the logs which supported the cabin, sounded very distinct. Smith imagined he heard a splash, and assuming a listening attitude, said cautiously, “Phwat may that mane?”
After a pause, Sam alertly remarked, “We have not kept a lookout. What if the dago’s partner should steal in on us?”
Smith’s eyes blazed with anger. Laying Constance’s hand down, he sprang to his feet. “Be the power ave justice,” he exclaimed between his teeth, “sure, an’ it do be a divil ave a bad job the rogue’ll take on, to boord us now.”