"Papa! papa!" she cried, and, springing forward, she darted to his embrace, and twined her arms about his neck with a sob which her joy had wrung from her.
"Darling papa!" she cried; "I thought you were never coming back. How could you leave me so long alone?" and, saying this, she burst into a passion of tears, while her father in vain tried to soothe her.
At this strange revelation of the General's daughter Guy stood perplexed and wondering. Certainly he had not been prepared for this. His _fiancée_ was undoubtedly of a somewhat stormy nature, and in the midst of his bewilderment he was conscious of feeling deeply reconciled to her ten years.
At length her father succeeded in quieting her, and, taking her arms from his neck, he placed her on his knee, and said:
"My darling, here is a gentleman waiting all this time to speak to you. Come, go over to him and shake hands with him."
At this the child turned her large black eyes on Guy, and scanned him superciliously from head to foot. The result seemed to satisfy her, for she advanced a few steps to take the hand which he had smilingly held out; but a thought seemed suddenly to strike her which arrested her progress half-way.
"Did _he_ keep you, papa?" she said, abruptly, while a jerk of her head in Guy's direction signified the proper noun to which the pronoun referred.
"He had something to do with it," answered her father, with a smile.
"Then I sha'n't shake hands with him," she said, resolutely; and, putting the aforesaid appendages behind her back to prevent any forcible appropriation of them, she hurried away, and clambered up on her father's knee. The General, knowing probably by painful experience the futility of trying to combat any determination of this very decided young lady, did not attempt to make any remonstrance, but allowed her to establish herself in her accustomed position. During this process Guy had leisure to inspect her. This he did without _any_ feeling of the immense importance of this child's character to his own future life, without thinking that this little creature might be destined to raise him up to heaven or thrust him down to hell, but only with the idle, critical view of an uninterested spectator. Guy was, in fact, too young to estimate the future, and things which were connected with that future, at their right value. He was little more than a boy, and so he looked with a boy's eyes upon this singular child.
She struck him as the oddest little mortal that he had ever come across. She was very tiny, not taller than many children of eight, and so slight and fragile that she looked as if a breath might blow her away. But if in figure she looked eight, in face she looked fifty. In that face there was no childishness whatever. It was a thin, peaked, sallow face, with a discontented expression; her features were small and pinched, her hair, which was of inky blackness, fell on her shoulders in long, straight locks, without a ripple or a wave in them. She looked like an elf, but still this elfish little creature was redeemed from the hideousness which else might have been her doom by eyes of the most wonderful brilliancy. Large, luminous, potent eyes--intensely black, and deep as the depths of ocean, they seemed to fill her whole face; and in moments of excitement they could light up with volcanic fires, revealing the intensity of that nature which lay beneath. In repose they were unfathomable, and defied all conjecture as to what their possessor might develop into.