One day, I wandered off lured by this novel sound, and lost myself in a pretty valley. I am not sure if it was not beyond the verge of our park, for I exhausted myself with the fatigue of running after the sound, and fell breathless upon the moss beneath a clump of trees. While I lay bewildered and panting with fatigue, a group of horsemen rushed down the valley in full chase. Their red coats flashed between the leaves, and I saw hound after hound leaping through the brushwood. They disappeared like a flash of lightning. Then came the swift leap of other horses, and a lady appeared among the trees. Her hunter was on the full run, shooting like a thunderbolt through thickets, and over the broken ground with foam flashing from his nostrils, and blood dropping from his mouth where the curb had been ground into it. The lady had lost all control of her hunter. She reeled in the saddle, and nothing but her desperate hold upon the rein kept her from falling.
I knew her, notwithstanding the masculine hat and cravat, the black skirt sweeping behind her like a thunder-cloud, and the deathly paleness of her face. I knew her the first moment, and shrunk back into the undergrowth, not with fear but loathing. Oh, how I did hate that woman. Some persons think children cannot hate. They never studied a child like me. She came on, pale as marble, reeling with exhaustion, but with a strong will firing her eyes till they gleamed like stars beneath her hat. On she came. The horse veered. A ravine lay before him. He stretched out his limbs and plunged forward. She saw death in the next instant, shrieked, flung up her arms, and the horse leaped from under her, lost his foothold on the opposite bank, reeled backward and fell with a fearful neigh into the depths of the ravine.
I did not move but looked on waiting to see if she would stir. I had no idea of death, but as I saw her pale face turned to the sky, her black garments sweeping like a pall down the bank, and her lifeless hand lying so still in the grass, a fierce interest seized me. It was not joy, nor pity, nor hate, but I thought of my mother, and hoped that the stillness would last forever.
A second horse came tearing his way down the valley. A scarlet coat flashed before my eyes and made me dizzy. Some one dismounted, a horse stood panting beneath his empty saddle. The fiery glow of crimson mingled confusedly with those black garments on the grass—then my sight cleared, and there was my father holding that woman in his arms—pressing her frantically to his bosom—raining kisses upon her marble forehead and her white eyelids. He held her back with his arms, looked into her face, uttered wild, sweet words that made my heart burn. Tears flashed down his cheeks, and fell like great diamonds in the blackness of her dress. His grief made him more of a child than I was.
He strained her to his heart, pressed his lips to hers, as if his own soul were pouring itself into her bosom.
“Jane, Jane, my love, my angel, my wife, listen to me, open your eyes! you are not dead—not gone—lost without knowing how much I love you. Oh, open those eyes—draw one breath, and I am your slave forever.”
She did not move, but lay cold and still in his arms. I was glad of it!
He laid her upon the grass with a groan that made even me start, and looked despairingly around.
“Will no one come?—must she die?—oh, my God, what can I do?”
He stood a moment, mute and still, looking, oh, how steadily, how mournfully down upon her. Then speaking aloud, and with a solemnity that made me tremble, he said,