The hostess saw her expression, and hastened to say—“Oh! they’re very nice, steady young men; they won’t make a noise, and keep you awake.”
“But have you no private room unoccupied? Your house seems large; I should think there were at least four chambers on this floor?”
“Lor’ bless you, child, so there are; but the floors ain’t laid to none o’ them except this one, which is the reason I have to put so many in it. Bless you, you mus’n’t mind such things out here—nobody does—’tain’t like where you come from, you know. And now, child, if there’s nothing else I can do for you, I hope you’ll excuse me, for indeed I am so tired I am almost ready to drop.”
“Certainly; indeed, I am sorry to have given you so much trouble. Good night!”
“Good night!” said the hostess, taking up her candle, and disappearing through the opening folds of the blanket.
Rosalie did not wish to sleep. The not unpleasant restlessness, induced by a new and strange position, drove sleep for a time from her eyes. She drew the chest to the only window in her part of the room, and sat down, and opened it, and looked out upon the dark green prairie, that seemed to roll out like the ocean to meet the eastern horizon, where the harvest moon was just rising. The full moon! It was the only familiar object that met her eyes in all the strange, wild, lonely, beautiful scene—the only old acquaintance—the only thing she had known at home! Tears—but not of sadness—rushed to her eyes. And then she thought of the vicissitudes of the last two years, and especially of the last two months; of her life of almost oriental luxury in the valley of the Pearl; of her home in the mountains of Virginia, where she was surrounded by all the advantages of wealth, taste, elegance, and comfort—where the eyes of affection watched her motions all day long, and many servants waited on her lightest bidding; and then of the roughness and ruggedness of her present lot. But not in repining, and not in regret did she compare these various phases of her life. She was happy if ever young wife was so. She looked upon the prairie, bathed in the silvery splendour of moonlight, with its mystic boundaries lost under the horizon, and its vastness and vagueness cast a glamour over her imagination, and charmed her with the fancy of wandering on and on in quest of its unknown limits, or as far as the vanishing boundaries might entice her. In the midst of these eyrie reveries sleep surprised her, and her fair head sank upon her folded hands on the window-sill.
She was awakened by a gentle clasp around her waist and a gentle voice in her ear, saying—
“My Rosalie—asleep at the window with the night dews falling on your head?”
She started, blushed, smiled, and exclaimed, “O, Mark, is it you? I am so glad that you have come!”
He let down the window, and placed his hand upon her head to see if it was damp, and asked—