It roused her, and I saw by the spread of her nostrils that her soul was on fire. My remarks were part of an old speech at school, which I happened to remember, but they served very well for a match to the powder of her romance. She gazed at me as if in raptures while I was speaking, and when I ended she clasped her hands, with tears, or water, in her eyes, and exclaimed:
“Yes, indeed, Mr. Smith, there is a romantic interest that clings to the memory of these Nature’s lords. Their mysterious origin, their nobility of soul, their mute adoration of the Great Spirit, the wild poetry of their legends, all have combined to make me admire them with all the fervor of my nature. Oh! what indeed must be the agony of their bursting hearts, as they stand on some lone mountain, and read in the smoke of the steamer their certain doom. Ah! when we think of their wrongs, the tomahawk becomes the battle-axe of freedom, and the scalping-knife as sacred as the dagger of a Corday.”
Fearing, if I encouraged her, she might pack up and go West, to become the Florence Nightingale of the Comanches, I begged pardon for changing the subject, and asked her if she had seen my sister.
“Your sister!” she exclaimed, in her surprise, “I thought you were travelling alone, and expected to meet your family at Niagara.”
“So I did, but it seems they telegraphed of the change in their plans after I had left the University; and so I was very greatly surprised to find them here.”
“She is not your sister, except by adoption, is she? I have heard Mrs. Marshman speak of you in connection with her. You are expected to love and marry her, are you not?”
“No, I cannot love on compulsion,” I replied, looking very steadily at her; “the emotion must be spontaneous, and unaffected by circumstances.”
“You express my sentiments perfectly,” she said, looking at me with a glance that was meant to be searching.
“Have you ever loved, Miss Finnock?” I asked, artlessly. Her eyes fell to her lap, and her fingers twitched each other as nervously as if she were a mute and were spelling.