“There,” he said, holding out both hands, “have I punished you enough, my fiery flamingo? Did you think I could not see that you were following my canoe all the time? But for that I should have been in the fort long ago; why, child, had it not been for my seeming wrath, you would have killed that silly girl yonder, and that would have set every patriot in the valley on your track.”
She stood looking at him, the haughtiness dropped away from her figure, and her lips began to tremble.
“Tahmeroo’s heart is like a white flower on the rocks; it opens to the rain, but folds itself close when thunder comes,” she said at last. “Speak again, that she may know how to answer.”
He knew that she was trembling from head to foot; that a passionate outbreak of forgiveness lay under those figurative words.
“What shall I say, Tahmeroo?—what is there to explain, where two people love each other as we do?”
She gave him her hand then—she gathered both his against her heart, that he might feel how loudly it was beating.
Butler cast a triumphant look on Jane. It pleased him that she witnessed the passionate love, the ready forgiveness, of that spirited young creature.
“Did you think, sir,” he said, leading his bride up to the missionary, “that any man could earnestly seek another while a being like this belonged to him?”
Poor Jane, she was no match for the audacity of this man, but fairly burst into tears of mortified vanity. It was a salutary lesson, which no one wished to render less impressive than it proved.
Tahmeroo stood by her husband in silence. All her sensitive modesty had returned, and she was restless, like a wild bird eager to get back to its cage.