“Let the man drive quick, that we may find the parchment,” answered Tahmeroo, eager to sacrifice her wealth.
Butler repeated her orders to the coachman, and the carriage, with its outriders—for Butler took state upon himself immediately on reaching England—dashed forward, and soon drew up before the lordly old mansion. The door swung open—a crowd of servants stood ranged in the hall, and as Tahmeroo entered the mansion a score of voices hailed her as the lady of Ashton.
The next day Butler went back to London, in order to take legal steps for the transfer of his wife’s property. For three weeks Tahmeroo wandered restlessly through the apartments of her new home, which had all the loneliness of the forest without its freedom. She was like a wild bird, and fled with shy timidity from the attendants when they came to take her orders. How often during those weeks did she sigh for her own savage home at the head of Seneca Lake.
At last Butler returned, accompanied by a couple of the worst class of London lawyers, and a company of reckless young men, who he persuaded Tahmeroo were necessary witnesses to the transfer she was so anxious to make. These men, who came down more out of curiosity to see the wild forest girl who had turned out a countess than from any other motive, were assembled in the library, a vast apartment, whose tarnished gilding and faded draperies bespoke the long disuse that had fallen upon its magnificence.
Tahmeroo, in her wildwood innocence, received her husband’s guests with genuine Indian hospitality. She was eager to complete the deeds which would make her lord a chief among them, and was bright with thankfulness for this opportunity to prove her love.
The entail of the Granby estates covered only an unimportant portion of the property, and when Tahmeroo was so eager to sign the deed which put Butler in possession, she was divesting her rank of all its appurtenances, and sweeping the property of a proud old family into the hands of a profligate and ruffian.
Still it was a beautiful sight when that true-hearted woman came into the room, arrayed with just enough of her former gorgeousness to give effect to her modern garment. A band of her own raven hair wreathed her head with a glossy coronet; her robe of crimson brocade, scattered over with bouquets of flowers, flowed in warm, rich folds about her person. She came in with all the stateliness of a queen, and the wild grace of a savage, her cheeks glowing like a ripe peach, and her eyes bright with affectionate triumph. She gloried in the sacrifice when the legal men told her how important it was.
A few smiling dashes of the pen, and the great bulk of Tahmeroo’s wealth was swept away, and with—more terrible for her—all the power she possessed over the kindness of her husband.
That night—that very night—while the ink was scarcely dry upon those parchments, he turned sullenly from her when she spoke of the happy life they should lead in that beautiful home, and muttered something which cut her to the heart about encumbrances being attached to everything he touched.
When the deeds were signed which made Tahmeroo her husband’s slave again, the young landholder and his guests sat down for a grand carouse, over which that queenly young wife was to preside.