“Hush, hush! child—don’t make all this outcry. It isn’t sickness at all; see, I am strong enough to lift you.” And taking the young Indian in his arms, he bore her across the small room and returning again, sat down on the bed, still holding her in his embrace.
She did not speak, she did not weep; to breathe then and there was happiness enough for her.
“Ah, but you cheat Tahmeroo. Your face is white as snow; you, you——”
“I tell you I am well, never better in my life,” he whispered, hurriedly; “but my only chance of escape lay in seeming ill. I have petitioned again and again to see General Schuyler, but until to-day he never came. I have made my face white and my voice weak for him. It has done its work, Tahmeroo; to-morrow I shall be taken from this gloomy place, and confined in a private family, from which there is some chance of escape. Now, are you satisfied that I am not dying?”
Tahmeroo laughed, and clasped her hands hard to keep from clapping them, in her joy. Her eyes shone like diamonds. The whole thing fired her Indian blood, which delighted in craft almost as much as in courage.
“And I shall go with you—I shall see you every day. Oh, I remember now—that proud man said that I must only come this once—only once.”
“Don’t cry; don’t begin to tremble after this fashion. An Indian wife should be brave,” said Butler, terrified by her agitation.
She lifted her head, and shook back the hair from her temples with a gesture of queenly pride.
“Tahmeroo is brave. See, if you can find tears in her eyes.”
“That’s right; now listen. Since you have come in I have thought of something. If you only had an old dress with you, such as white people wear; but these things are too fanciful; they will never do.”