Captain Howard also remembered Fort Prince George regretfully, and also with a vague wish that she had never seen the little stronghold. He was not exactly discontented with Raymond as a son-in-law, but this was not his preference, for he had advocated her acceptance of Mervyn’s suit. His own limited patrimony lay adjoining the Mervyn estate, and he thought the propinquity a mutual advantage to the prospects of the two young people, and that it materially enhanced Arabella’s position as a suitable match for the Mervyn heir. The succeeding baronet was a steady conventional fellow, and had been very well thought of in the regiment before he sold out upon coming into his title and fortune. Raymond would be obliged to stick to the army, having but small means, and he would doubtless do well if he could be kept within bounds.
“But,” Captain Howard qualified, describing the absent soldier to an intimate friend and country neighbor in Kent, over the post-prandial wine and walnuts,—“but he is such a frisky dare-devil! If he could be scared half to death by somebody it would tame him, and be the making of him.”
In a few years it might have seemed that this had been compassed, for it was said that Raymond was afraid of his lovely wife. He was obviously so solicitous of her approval, he considered her judgment of such peculiar worth, and he thought her so “monstrous clever,” that when impervious to all other admonitions, he could be reached, advised, warned, through her influence.
When he became a personage of note, for in those days of many wars he soon rose to eminence, and it was desired to flatter, or court, or conciliate him, a difficult feat, for he was absolutely without vanity for his own sake, it was understood that there was one secure road to his favorable consideration,—he was never insensible to admiration of his wife’s linguistic accomplishments, which included among more useful tongues, the unique acquisition of something of the Cherokee language. Then, too, he was always attentive and softened by any comment, in some intimate coterie, upon the jewel, now called a pendant, which, hanging by a slender chain, rose and fell on a bosom as delicately white as the gem itself. The great pearl was associated with the most cherished sentiments of his life, his love and his pride in his professional career,—with the inauguration of his dear and lasting romance, and his first independent command. With a tender reminiscent smile on his war-worn face, he would ask her to repeat the word for the moon in the several dialects, and would listen with an unwearied ear as she rehearsed her spirited story of the “sleeping sun,” and the method of its barter for the amulet.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE STORM CENTRE
A NOVEL
Cloth 12mo $1.50
“This beautiful novel by Charles Egbert Craddock shows the brilliant and popular writer in her best vein.... The war scenes, the guiding motives of the opposed sides, the pictures of the old Southern household, are strikingly impressive by the nobility and the breadth of their portrayal. The book is one to be held in high favor long.”—Louisville Courier-Journal.