Mrs. Hemans
All the forenoon, Carolyn Clifton sat in the same place and in the same attitude in which we left her, affecting to read, but really watching the mountain-path with heart-sickening anxiety. Every distant sound of a horse’s hoofs that struck upon her ear, sent an electric shock to her heart, causing her to start violently, tremble, and turn deadly sick and faint, with accelerated hope and fear, until its nearer approach revealed some neighbor going on his way, or some negro coming from the mill or the village, to her despairing sight. Even the sound of carriage wheels, as they occasionally rolled by, made her heart pause in its pulsations until it passed, and proved to be some family going on a visit or a shopping errand.—For still she hoped that if he did not come down the mountain-path on horseback, he might come round the road with his mother in her carriage. He came not. And oh, the wedding-day was almost over! No one saw the strife of hope and fear, like the struggle of life and death, going on silently in her bosom. Mrs. Georgia Clifton spent the whole forenoon in her own apartment, professing to be engaged with many elegant preparations for the evening; but really full of triumph for the success of her wicked scheming, and anxiety and wonder for the events of the evening, and dark regret also for the absence of him who, if lost to Carolyn forever, was lost to herself for a time at least. With all these passions and emotions striving in her bosom, she dared not show herself, lest her conscious heart and conscious face should betray her—for Georgia was yet young in wickedness.
The Misses Cabell were in their own chamber, putting a few finishing touches to their dresses for the evening, for they, with Zuleime, were to be the bridesmaids.
Zuleime herself had not yet returned, although it was near noon.
Old Mr. Clifton had been out, as was his daily habit of a forenoon, riding around his plantation.
He came in to-day a little earlier than usual, and finding his daughter exactly where he left her, but looking still more pale, haggard and anxious than in the morning, he sat down by her side, put his arm tenderly around her waist, and gazed lovingly into her whitened and sharpened countenance, before he said interrogatively—
“Not come yet, Carolyn?”
“No, sir!” answered the young lady rising and putting off her father’s caressing arm, and her own humiliating despondency, with a proud and queenly air.
“Well!” said the old man, with sudden energy, “I will certainly now ride up to Hardbargain and know the reason. Dandy!—my horse, there! Bring him back!—I’ve not done with him!”
“Father!” said Carolyn, seizing his hand, and detaining him, while she raised her head and looked and spoke in a manner that reminded him more strongly than ever of her arrogant mother, “Father, no, you will not go! No, no, father, if you have any love for me, any respect for the memory of my dead mother, do not subject her daughter and yours to such a mortification! No, father, if he never comes, never go after him!”