"Oh, Rule! Miserable woman that I was! I wrecked your life! I wrecked your career!"
"No, dear, no; the mistake, I said, was mine! I should have trusted your heart. I should have given you the time you implored; I should not have fled in the madness of suddenly wounded affection."
"Oh, Rule? if you could have only looked back on me after you went away, only known the anguish your disappearance caused me and the inconsolable sorrow of the time that followed it."
"If I could have supposed it possible even, I would have hastened to you, from the uttermost parts of the earth!"
"And then they reported you dead, murdered by the Comanches, in the massacre of La Terrepeur, and sorrow was deepened to despair."
"Yes; I heard of that massacre. The report of my death must have arisen in this way: I had lived at La Terrepeur for many months, but had left and come to this place some days before the massacre. Some other unfortunate was murdered and burned in the deserted hut, whose bones were found in ashes. I did not return to contradict the report. I wished to be dead to the world, as I was dead to hope, dead to you, dead to myself!"
"Oh, Rule! in all that time how I longed, famished, fainted, died, for your presence! Yes, Rule; died daily."
"My own, dear Cora, how could I have mistaken you? Oh! if I had only known!"
"Ah, yes! if you had only known my heart, or I had only known your whereabouts! In either case we should have met before, and not lost four years out of our lives! But now, Rule," she said, with sudden animation—"now 'We meet to part no more,' as the hymn says. I will never, never, never, leave you for a day! I will be your very shadow!"
"My sunshine, rather, dear!"