"I will try to do everything that you wish, Uncle!" said the Colonel; and no doubt that he really meant to obey that portion of his Uncle's injunctions—to keep the property in the family.
"And look here, Egbert," said the old man, who seemed to speak with less difficulty than was usual to him, though there were hindrances in his delivery very painful to the hearer and which we cannot caricature age and decrepitude by attempting to convey. "Look here—there is one thing more. Not a dollar to that scoundrel, Richard!—not a dollar, if he starves!"
"Not a dollar, Uncle; I promise you this, solemnly." And this promise, too, he meant to keep, beyond a question.
"And, Egbert, keep Mary away from him. Don't let him even see her if you can avoid it. They used to be together a great deal, and I don't know—I don't know!" What the old man did not know, must remain among the other mysteries not yet to be revealed. "Keep her away from him—don't let her go near him."
Though there were words in this last sentence of his Uncle's which did not entirely please the Colonel, yet there were others which did please him thoroughly. He made the third promise with the same alacrity. How easy the old man was making his path! To keep the property in the family (that meant, to keep it himself!) to give Richard no part of it under any circumstances (a thing not very likely)—and to keep his young wife from the presence of a man from whom he had only won her by the basest falsehood (a thing he was certain to do at all events)—these were the three injunctions: how easy to fulfil! The cup of the young man's content was at that moment brimming over, and the impudent chanticleer who only five minutes before had tortured him from the garden palings, was quite forgotten.
Just then there was a light foot-fall on the piazza behind the two speakers. The dulled senses of John Crawford were too dim to recognize it, but the keener faculties of the Colonel heard the beat of the little foot at once and knew it to be Mary's. He was just opening his mouth to say to his uncle, "Here is Mary, now!" when he caught a glimpse of her face; and then he remained gazing and said nothing. Mary had returned from her walk, had thrown off her bonnet, and stepped out to the piazza to look after the comfort of her father, and perhaps for some other purpose. She was at that moment just outside the door, and from the position of the Colonel, framed between the pillars at the other end of the piazza and against the dark green foliage of an arborvitae standing beyond. What was it that the quick eye of the Colonel saw, as he turned, that stopped the words upon his lips and made him look in silence on the young girl's face and figure? She had been absent from the house less than an hour—what could have occurred to her, within that space of time, to change their relative positions? And yet their relative positions were changed—he felt the truth in an instant. He had parted with her less than two hours before—he the successful deceiver and she the blind victim. They met again, and she had gone beyond his power and his knowledge. We have often before had occasion, in the course of this narration, to speak of sudden changes in the human face and demeanor, so marked as to be absolutely startling. None of those changes could have been more marked than that shown by the face and figure of this young girl, as glanced at by the practiced eye of this man of the world. She looked taller, straighter in form, and no longer drooping and inelastic. Her glorious auburn hair was partially shaken loose from its confinement, as it had become during the exciting interview with Josephine Harris; and while the negligence added to the charm of her appearance, the very fact that she had not displayed a woman's coquetry in smoothing it rapidly into order before the glass when she threw off her bonnet, betrayed that she was much more awake and excited than usual. Was this on account of the near approach of the hour of her marriage? Egbert Crawford scarcely thought so, for the eye was not that of an expectant bride. That soft, sweet hazel eye still looked sad and troubled, but there seemed to be a spark of something fiercer and sharper than love, amid the trouble. Once more, what was it? Never before had she seemed so handsome, but never so unapproachable; and if the unscrupulous man had really held a true sentiment of love for her, at the bottom of all his selfish and evil designs (and who shall say that he had not?) there came the sharpest and deepest pang of his life in the first awakening of the thought that she was slipping away from him even at the moment when he had apparently clutched her.
The Colonel, thoroughly mystified and a little alarmed, rose from his seat and was advancing towards the young girl, when she moved a pace towards him, her eyes first downcast and then even sternly raised to his face. She did not call him by name, nor wait until he had so addressed her, but held close to him, as if to avoid any possible observation, a small sealed note—and said, her voice trembling and husky:
"A private note for you. Please read it at once."
Passing by him without another word and without waiting for any reply, she advanced towards the end of the piazza where her father was sitting, and knelt down beside him. Colonel Egbert Crawford noted every feature of the movement, and saw that his fancy of the change in her appearance was not fancy alone. There was something threatening. Mechanically he had taken the note as she had handed it to him and passed by. He glanced at the superscription, and though his wonder was increased, his fears of a rupture with Mary were partially dissipated, for the hand was totally unknown to him. Ha! he had it! The hand-writing on the note was that of a woman—the note had come to the house for him—she had seen it and conceived a sudden spasm of jealousy on account of it! How easily he could dissipate that idea by showing her the note, which he was certain could not be from any illicit female correspondent who had brought him within her power. The note was almost certain to be from some lady on professional business, or from the wife, sister or mother of some recruit who had enlisted in the famous Two Hundredth, asking for his influence towards a discharge or a furlough. He would show her the note at once, after he had read it, and with some kind of laughing excuse for showing it which would not betray the fact that he knew of her having any interest in it; and then this sudden but not dangerous hurricane would be over.
He glanced round at the pair on the end of the piazza, a smile of triumph on his face, as he came to this conclusion. Mary was kneeling beside her father, her back towards himself, fondling the old man's poor withered face, and paying so little attention to the man so soon to be her husband, that the jealousy hypothesis might have seemed well supported. What was it that the little girl had said to Josephine Harris, not half an hour before?—that "she could never meet Egbert Crawford after such a revelation?" Something of the kind, certainly. And she had met him, and unconsciously and without calculation gone through the very-brief interview in a manner worthy of the most finished actress—say of La Heron, La Hoey or La Bateman, to name three of the most dissimilar but ablest representatives of dramatic character on the American stage. Oh, these little women, who make a boast of their weakness—there is very little that they cannot do when brought to the test!