A Noble Woman

by Ann S. Stephens

There had been a lull in the music, but it struck up again now, and the saloons reverberated with a stirring waltz. Elizabeth stood a moment listening to the crash of sound and the tread of light feet, but her heart was full and her brow anxious. She went to the window and looked out. It was a lovely night, but the eternal roll and sweep of the ocean seemed to depress her with some terrible dread. In all that splendid tumult she was alone. As she stood by the window her husband came down the hall smiling upon the lady who hung upon his arm. He had not missed her, would not miss her. There was no fear of that. She glided away with this dreary thought in her mind. Mellen almost touched her as she turned into a little room opening upon the conservatory, but she went on unnoticed.

Tom Fuller had retreated into the conservatory, and was sitting disconsolately in an iron garden chair, sheltered by a small tree, drooping with yellow fringe-like blossoms, when a lady entered from one of the side doors, and passed out towards the gardens.

Tom started up, and called out, "Bessie! Why, Bessie, is that you? What on earth—"

The lady made no response, but looked over her shoulder, and sprang forward like a deer, causing a tumult among the plants as she rushed through them.

Tom stood motionless, lost in amazement; for over a ball dress which seemed white—he could discover nothing more,—the lady was shrouded head and person, in a blanket shawl, which he knew to be Elizabeth's, from the broad crimson stripes that ran across it.

After his first amazement Tom sat down again, heaving a deep sigh, and retreated further behind the flowering branches, that no one might look upon his unmanly sorrow.

"Poor Bessie, poor thing," he muttered, "I suppose she feels just as I do, like a fish out of water, in all these fine doings. I'd follow her, and we'd take a melancholy walk together in the moonlight, if it was not that Elsie might happen to get tired of dancing with those fellows, and come in here to rest a minute, when I could hide away and look at her through the plants."

Tom had in reality startled the lady shrouded in that great travelling shawl, for once out of doors she stood full half a minute listening with bated breath, and one foot advanced, ready to spring away if any sound reached her. Then she walked on with less desperate haste, bending her course through the shrubberies towards a grove of trees that lay between the open grounds and the shore.

It was a balmy October evening, moonlight, but shadowed by hosts of white scudding clouds. The wind blew up freshly from the water, scattered storms of gorgeous leaves around her as she approached the grove which was still heavy with foliage, perfectly splendid in the sunlight, but now all shadows and blackness. On the edge of the grove, just under a vast old oak, whose great limbs scarcely swayed in the wind, the lady paused and uttered some name in a low, cautious voice.

A spark of fire flashed down to the earth, as if some one had flung away his cigar in haste, and instantly footsteps rustled in the dead leaves. The branches of the oak bent low, and behind it was a thicket of young trees. The lady did not feel safe, even in the darkness, but moved on to meet the person who advanced in the deeper shadows, where even the edges of her white dress, which fell below the shawl, were lost to the eye.