Whereat she laughed, and they passed onward to their happy home.
CHAPTER VI.
APOLLO AND DIANA.
From this time it became evident that a strong public opinion was gradually setting itself against the family. Mistress Vines, conceiving herself in point of birth and family superior to any other woman in the colony, might be pardoned some little haughtiness which so well became her handsome head, and being of a higher culture than her neighbors, it might not be surprising if some consciousness of it were apparent in her manners; but these petty traits weigh heavily on the minds of a people more ambitious than cultivated, and inclined to envy and jealousy, as the proud and ignorant are sure to be.
The wife and daughters of Captain Bonyton more especially conceived themselves aggrieved by the deportment of Mistress Vines, and though the captain exerted his utmost influence to allay the growing irritation, he was far from being successful, women being very apt to think that when they have made a matter the subject of prayer, they must necessarily be in the right. To these causes was added another nearer home: John Bonyton, the son and brother, had, from the first, shown himself not only interested in Hope Vines, but completely absorbed in her. Seeing this, outraged as they conceived themselves to have been by the mother, the undisguised devotion of John to Hope, “the impish creetur’,” as they not unfrequently called her, was adding gall to bitterness.
John Bonyton was a bold, headstrong boy, such as the period and circumstances of a new and unsettled country would be likely to develop, but such as the rigid disciplinarians of the day would regard with little favor. It is well known that these iron-cast men and women must either break down the high spirits engendered by their own flesh and blood, and mental make, or be confronted by a spirit like their own, which nothing can quell but the maker of the spirit of man.
Tall and dark, the youth John Bonyton was handsome withal, reckless and roving; disinclined to toil, and expert in woodland sports, like Hope, he found better companionship with the natives of the forest, and dwellers in the wigwam, than in the more exact decorums of civilized society. Generous and daring, he was also tender to the gentler sex, even to a degree unwonted among the stern men who had found a refuge from persecution amid the wilds of the New World.
The unthrifty son, and the white-haired, dark-eyed daughter of Sir Richard Vines were considered one and inseparable. In the wildest woods, adown the deepest ravines, up the highest hills, and off by the sea-side, might be traced everywhere the footsteps of the strong, peril-loving children, and the silvery laugh of little Hope rung like the chimes of the wren-bird upon the air.
Nothing could be more wildly picturesque than the two—he with his dark, flashing eyes and curling hair, athletic, and yet light and flexible as a young mountain sapling, armed with pouch and gun, and followed by a brace of hounds, his invariable companions, and the pretty Hope in her short, crimson-velvet frock, revealing feet arched, elastic and small, even for her diminutive figure, and molding the pointed shoe by its firm pressure. A light velvet cap surmounted her head, and bracelets of gems and strings of wampum intermingled upon her arms and girdle. Over these hung her abundant hair, like a silvery vail—rippling, wavy, and crisping into curls about her temples. She generally carried a bow and arrow in her hands, and was nothing loth to bring down a bird or arrest the flight of a rabbit in her pathway.