Valeria ran her eyes quickly over the letter, and then she threw herself into a chair—but it was to laugh. Miss Sutherland raised her head in silent surprise and displeasure. But still Valeria laughed, till the tears ran down her cheeks, holding up one hand in speechless deprecation, to implore forgiveness for a mirth impossible to restrain. When she found her voice—“Why, my dear, unsophisticated girl, there is nothing except a great deal of food for laughter in all this! He has been in New York at the height of the annual fever, and has caught it! He has been bit by a raging reformer, and gone rabid! Not the first hot-headed young southerner sent to a northern college who has fallen into the same series of fevers. But they all come safely through it! When they find out that to free their slaves means just to empty their pockets, and go to work with their own hands or brains, you have no idea how refrigerating the effect. Don’t fear for Mr. Sutherland. He will be brought beautifully out of it! Only note it! he will never send a son of his to be educated at a northern college. Come, cheer up, my love, and never mind my laughing. Really it is legitimate food for laughter! Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!”
“Oh, don’t! Only think of it, even at its best! Here, for weeks past, he has been mingling freely with these sort of persons—mixing in their assemblies, where people of all colours and castes meet on equal terms, in a stifling crowd—oh, Queen of Heaven! it is a ruinous dishonour—an unspeakable insult he has cast upon me, his betrothed!” she exclaimed, rising with all the proud and passionate energy of deep and strong conviction.
And again Mrs. Vivian gave way to a peal of silvery laughter, exclaiming, “Why, you simple maiden! gentlemen will do such odd things, because you see they (poets excepted) have no instincts—not even any original ideas of refinement. But be comforted! He comes to us by sea, and will have passed through several hundred miles of salt sea wind before he reaches your fragrant boudoir.”
“Do not pursue this subject! Do not, Valeria! Do not press it upon me so! It wrongs, it injures me—I feel it does!” said India, with energetic earnestness.
“I never saw you so deeply and strongly moved before—nonsense! But indeed I must have my laugh out with somebody! It is, besides, too good to keep—this ludicrous secret! Ah, here comes Mr. Bolling, with Uncle Clement in his wake, no doubt, for he went to fetch him! I must tell Uncle Clement of his son-in-law’s conversation or—die.
“Uncle, Uncle Clement! what do you think has happened to Mark? Listen,” exclaimed the vivacious lady, running off with the letter. Miss Sutherland sprang and caught her hand, and, pale as death, cried out, “On your life, Valeria—on your soul! You do not know my father; he abhors those sects with an exterminating fury of hatred! Give me the letter! Nay, now by your honour, Valeria! It was a sacred confidence. Give me the letter!” and she wrested the contended paper away from the giddy, laughing, little lady.
“Heyday! What the mischief is all this? A regular romp or wrestle? Let me put down my hat, and I’ll stand by and see fair play,” exclaimed Mr. Bolling, who had just entered.
Blushing with anger at having suffered herself to be surprised out of her usual repose of manner, Miss Sutherland sat down in silent dignity, while Mrs. Vivian, still laughing, inquired, “Where is uncle?”
“Where? Yes! ‘Echo answers where?’ He has not been home to breakfast nor dinner, and now I suppose he’ll not be here to supper. I went down to the mill to bring him home to supper; he was not there! Guess where he was? Gone over the other side of the river, to preside at the lynching of an incendiary. Upon my sacred word and honour!” exclaimed Uncle Billy, growing crimson in the face, “the most cruel, unjust, unwarrantable proceeding I ever heard of in all my life; though, to be perfectly fair, I must say it serves the fellow exactly right.”
“Apropos—what did I tell you, Valeria?” said Miss Sutherland, in a low voice.