“No, no, I do not wish to get out,” she said, pointing toward the receding lamps with her finger. “Mount again and follow that carriage.”
The man hastily closed the door, and mounting his seat, drove rapidly after Mr. Clark’s carriage. Zulima was now wild with excitement; the blood seemed to leap through her heart—her cheeks burned like fire. She gasped for breath, when a turn in the streets took those carriage-lamps an instant from her sight.
They came in sight of a fine old mansion house, standing back from the street and surrounded by tall trees; an aristocratic and noble dwelling it was, with the lights gleaming through its windows, and those rare old trees curtaining its walls with their black branches, now gilded and glowing with the golden flashes of light that came through all the windows. The house was evidently illuminated for a party—one of those pleasant summer-parties that are half given in the open air. A few lamps hung like stars along the thick branches that curtained the house, and glowed here and there through a honeysuckle arbor, or in a clump of bushes, just lightly enough to reveal the dewy green of the foliage, without breaking up the quiet evening shadows that lay around them. Mr. Clark’s carriage stopped before this noble mansion, and Zulima saw him pass lightly into the deep old-fashioned portico while her vehicle was yet half a block off.
“Do you wish to get out here?” said the coachman, going again to the door; “the carriage that you ordered me to follow does not seem to be going any farther.”
“I know, I see,” said Zulima; “not now, I will wait. Draw off to the opposite side of the street, and then we shall be in nobody’s way.”
The man expressed no surprise at her strange orders, but drove back to the shadowy side of the street and waited, standing by the door a moment, to learn if she had any further directions to give. Zulima bent from the window; she was terribly agitated and her voice trembled.
“Whose house is this?” she said, hurriedly.
The man told the owner’s name. It was one celebrated in the history of our country; and Zulima remembered with a pang that the daughters of that house were among the most lovely and beautiful women of America. Smith had told her that her husband was about to be married. Was it in that stately old mansion house that she must search for a rival? How her cheek burned, how her lip trembled, as she asked herself the question!
“Did you know,” she said, addressing the man; “did you know the gentleman who just went in yonder?”
“Oh yes, everybody here knows Mr. Clark,” said the man. “I guessed well enough where his carriage was driving to, when it started from the hotel. He is going to marry one of the young ladies; at least the papers say so.”