Randolph did not say that she was an angel, but he thought that she was very beautiful for a wild woman.
She rose.
"Come, let us join father," she said,—"and I am dying to see this sister of yours, friend Randolph."
Taking her bonnet in one hand, she left her cloak on the sofa, and led the way to the door. At a glance Randolph surveyed her tall and magnificent figure. As leaving him, silent and bewildered, on the sofa, she turned her face over her shoulder, and looked back upon him, Randolph muttered to himself the thought of his soul, in one word, "negro!" So much beauty, purity and truth before him, embodied in a woman's form, and between that woman and himself an eternal barrier! The blood of an accursed race in his veins, the mark of bondage stamped upon the inmost fiber of his existence—it was a bitter thought. "You are absent, Randolph," she said, and came back to him, "shall I guess your thoughts?" She laid her hand upon his shoulder, and bent down until he felt her breath upon his forehead.
"You are thinking of the night in the Apennines?" she whispered. Randolph uttered an incoherent cry of rapture, and reached forth his arms, and drew her to his breast.—Their lips met—"You have not forgotten it?" he whispered.
She drew back her head as she was girdled by his arms, in order to gaze more freely upon his face. Blushing from the throat to the forehead, not with shame, but with a passion as warm and as pure as ever lighted a woman's bosom, she answered in a whisper:
"Randolph, I love you!"
"Love me! Ah, my God, could I but hope," he gasped.
She laid her hand upon his mouth.
"Hush, I am my father's child. We happen to think alike on subjects of importance. If you have not changed since the night in the Apennines, why—why, then Randolph, you will find that I am the same. As for my father, he always loved you."