Meanwhile the innocent and most unhappy cause of the impending duel had passed a miserable week on the solitary island, in dread anticipation of her father’s and her lover’s return, and with no one near her to breathe one hopeful, comforting, or sustaining word to her fainting heart.
It was late on the evening of the day of her father’s arrival that she sat alone on the front piazza of her solitary dwelling, wrapped in despairing thought, yet with every nerve acute with involuntary vigilance, when, amid the low, musical semi-silence of the autumnal night, the sound of a boat, pushed gratingly up upon the gravelly beach, reached her listening ear.
And while she still watched and waited in breathless anxiety, she perceived by the clear starlight the tall figure of a man, dressed in the blue and buff uniform of an American officer, and in whose stature, air, and gait she recognized her father, approaching the house.
In joy, but still more in fear, she arose and hurried to meet him. But so terrible was the trouble of her mind and the agitation of her frame, that she could scarcely falter forth her inaudible words of welcome before she sank exhausted in his arms.
In silence the soldier lifted her up, noticing even then how very light was her wasted frame; in silence he kissed her cold lips, and bore her onward to the house, and into her mother’s favorite parlor which was already lighted up, and where he placed her in an easy-chair. She sank back half fainting, while he stood and looked upon her, and saw how changed she was.
Her attenuated form, her emaciated face, with its cavernous eyes, hollow cheeks and temples, and pallid forehead, in fearful contrast with her flowing black locks and mourning dress, gave her the appearance of a girl in the very last stage of consumption. Yet this was the work only of calumny, persecution, and abandonment.
Some one should write a book on Unindicted Homicides.
While Major Helmstedt gazed in bitterness of heart upon this beautiful wreck of his fair, only daughter, she fixed her despairing eyes upon him, and said:
“My father, do you wonder to find me here!”
For answer, he stooped and kissed her forehead.