“She knows it now.”
“Yet last night Tahmeroo, my daughter, the bride of Walter Butler, found your sister here under these very branches, planning to elope with him.”
“I know it,” answered Mary, shrinking together, and turning pale as if she, not Jane, had been in fault—“I know it; but that is all over now.”
“Do not be so sure of that, my poor child; there is no security against treachery and weakness; but if you are already informed that Walter Butler is married by every law that can bind two persons for life, my errand here is half done. Last night my unhappy child came to the camp wild with the torture that wicked man had inflicted. I will not speak harshly of your sister: if her folly works sharper than wickedness, it is not your fault; but my business here was to warn her of the danger she is braving. I did not wish to see a person whose folly has already irritated a temper not particularly placable, but sent for you, because my child told me of your kindness—your true, generous courage. I wished to thank you—to impress you with the danger that hangs over your family if Tahmeroo receives farther wrong or insult here.”
“I would rather die than think it could happen again,” answered Mary Derwent, with gentle earnestness. “My sister is so young—so very, very beautiful, that she is not content with the love of a single heart, as one who has nothing pleasant about her might be. It is only a fancy—a wild dream with her. I’m sure you would believe it could you see how dearly she is loved by—by one, oh! so much superior to this Captain Butler.”
“Then your sister is beloved—she is engaged, perhaps?”
“Beloved—oh, yes!” answered Mary, in a voice so sweetly mournful that the haughty soul of Catharine Montour thrilled within her. “They are engaged, too, I believe. You know it would be impossible for him to live near Jane and not wish to marry her. As for him, of course she cannot help loving him—who could?”
The last two words were uttered in a sigh so deep and heart-broken that Catharine felt it thrilling through her own frame. Her forest life had never possessed the power to dull or break that one string in her heart; it was sensitive and tremulous as ever. She understood all that Mary was suffering, and back upon her soul rushed a tide of sympathy so earnest and delicate that for a time those two beings, so opposite in all things else, felt painfully together—the one sad from memory, the other suffering under the weight of a cruel reality eternally present in her own person.
Unconsciously Catharine’s right hand fell upon the beautiful head, which bent under it like a flower on its stalk.
“Poor, poor child!” she murmured, and tears kept resolutely from her eyes, broke forth in her voice: “I know well how to feel for you.”