Here he stopped again abruptly, and looked at his companion in much greater agitation than he would have felt if he had just thrown the dice for life or death. She stood for a moment with her eyes fixed on the earth, as if waiting for him to go on, then slowly raised them to his face.
"You risked your life to save mine. You need not believe that I could ever forget it."
Morton's heart sprang to his lips. Nature had not been liberal to him in the gift of tongues, but the energy of his emotion supplied the defect. Nor were his words thrown away; for with all its outward calm, the nature that responded to them was earnest and ardent as his own.
It was an hour or more since the whippoorwills had begun their evening cries, when they returned to the house. Candles were lighted, and Leslie was sitting with two persons from the neighborhood, an agent of the Matherton factories and a lawyer, conversing upon railroad stocks. He looked very uneasily at his daughter and Morton, but said nothing. The latter was engrossed with one idea; but he forced himself to join in the conversation, and favored the company with his views—not very lucid on this occasion—upon the topic under discussion. He soon, however, contrived to whisper to Miss Leslie, "I shall go in five minutes—will you meet me in the hall?" She left the room in a few moments; and Morton, after a short interval, took his leave, in much alarm lest his intended father-in-law should strain courtesy so far as to follow him. Leslie, however, remained quiet; and he found his mistress waiting for him at the hall door. Their interview was short, but Morton never forgot it. After bidding her good night some eight or ten times, he compelled himself to leave the house, mounted his horse, waved his hand to Edith Leslie, whom he saw watching him from a side window, wheeled, rode down the avenue, turned as he reached the entrance of the trees, and waved his hand again towards the window. His heart was full to overflowing, and tears, not of sorrow, ran down his cheeks. "Good Heaven!" laughed Morton, as he brushed them away, "this has not happened to me before these twelve years." He waved a farewell once more, and spurring his horse, rode down the avenue into the high road.
It was a soft, warm, starlight evening, and, as he passed along, he heard the voices of the whippoorwills from far and near, while the meadows, the orchards, and the borders of the woods sparkled with fireflies. With loosened rein, he suffered his horse to canter lightly forward, and gave himself up to the enchantment of his dreams. A thousand times in his after life did he recall the visions of that evening's ride.
About a mile before reaching the town, the road passed, for a few rods, through a belt of thick woods. While riding through the darkest of the shadow, a strange cry startled him—a shriek so wild and awful that the blood curdled in his veins, and his horse leaped aside with fright. There was a rustling among the branches over his head, a flapping and fanning of broad pinions, and the dusky form of some great bird sailed away into the innermost darkness of the woods. Morton knew the sound. It was the voice of the great horned owl, rarely found in that part of the country, though he had once or twice before heard its midnight yells in the lonely forests of Maine.
The cry long rang in his ears. It seemed fraught with startling portent, clouded his spirits, and umbered the rose-tint of his reveries. He turned his face to the stars, and breathed a prayer for the welfare of his mistress.
CHAPTER XXIII.
| L'ambition, l'amour, l'avarice, la haine, Tiennent comme un forçat son esprit à la chaîne.—Boileau. |