"Ah, no," said Edith. "No! always yours, my dear father--your child;" and then she added, while the glowing blood rushed over her beautiful face like the gush of morning over a white cloud: "Your child, though his wife."
It cost her an effort to utter the word wife, and yet she was pleased to speak it; but then the moment after, as if to hide it from memory again, she said: "Oh, that dear Walter were here. He would be very happy, I know, and say I had come to the end of my day-dreaming."
"He will be here probably to-night," said her lover.
"We must not count upon it," said her father; "he may meet many things to detain him; and now, my children, I will go in and make up my journal till the dinner hour."
Edith leaned fondly on his bosom, and whispered: "And write that this has been one happy day, my father."
The day went by; night fell, and Walter Prevost did not appear in his father's house. No alarm, however, was entertained, for out of the wide range of chances there were many events which might have occurred to detain him. A shade of anxiety, perhaps, came over Edith's mind; but it passed away the next morning, when she heard from the negro Chaudo (or Alexander), who, having been brought up among the Indians from his infancy, was better acquainted with their habits than any person in the house, that there had not been a single one in the neighborhood since the preceding morning at eight o'clock.
"All gone west, Missy," he said; "the last to go were old Chief Black Eagle. I hear ob him coming to help you, and I go out to see."
Edith asked no questions in regard to the sources of his information, for he was famous for finding out all that was going on in the neighborhood, and with a childlike vanity making somewhat of a secret of the means by which he obtained intelligence; but she argued, reasonably, though wrongly, that as Walter was not to set out from Albany till about the same hour the Indians departed, he could not have fallen in with any of their parties.
Thus passed the morning till about three o'clock; but then, when the lad did not appear, anxiety rose up and became strong, as hour after hour went by and he came not. Each tried to sustain the hopes of the others; each argued against the apprehensions he himself entertained. Lord H---- pointed out that the commander-in-chief, to whom Walter had been sent, might be absent from Albany. Mr. Prevost suggested that the young man might have found no boat coming up the river; and Edith remembered that very often the boatmen were frightfully exorbitant in their charge for bringing anyone on the way who seemed eager to proceed. Knowing her brother's character well, she thought it very likely that he would resist an attempt at imposition, even at the risk of delay. But still she was very, very anxious, and as night again fell, and the hour of repose arrived without his presence, tears gathered in her beautiful eyes and trembled on the silken lashes.
The following morning dawned in heavy rain. A perfect deluge seemed descending from the sky, but still Lord H---- ordered his horse at an early hour, telling Edith and Mr. Prevost in as quiet and easy a tone as he could assume, that he was going to Albany.