"If your own safety demands it, yes—a thousand times yes. We must fly, and there is not a moment to lose. A design exists among those wretches to seize you, and to make use of your fears to secure the aid of your uncle in extricating them from the consequences of this discovery of their robberies. It is not safe, I repeat, for you to remain a minute longer here."
The smile that Dus now bestowed on me was very sweet, though I found it inexplicable; for it had as much of pain and suffering in it, as it had of that which was winning.
"Mordaunt Littlepage, have you forgotten the words spoken by me when we last parted?" she asked, seriously.
"Forgotten! I can never forget them! They drove me nearly to despair, and were the cause of bringing us all into this difficulty."
"I told you that my faith was already plighted—that I could not accept your noble, frank, generous, manly offer, because another had my troth."
"You did—you did. Why renew my misery—"
"It is with a different object that I am now more explicit. That man to whom I am pledged is in those huts, and I cannot desert him."
"Can I believe my senses! Do you—can you—is it possible that one like Ursula Malbone can love Zephaniah Thousandacres—a squatter himself, and the son of a squatter?"
The look with which Dus regarded me, said at once that her astonishment was quite as great as my own. I could have bitten off my hasty and indiscreet tongue, the instant it had spoken; and I am sure the rush of tell-tale blood in my face must have proclaimed to my companion that I felt most thoroughly ashamed of myself. This feeling was deepened nearly to despair, when I saw the expression of abased mortification that came over the sweet and usually happy countenance of Dus, and the difficulty she had in suppressing her tears.
Neither spoke for a minute, when my companion broke silence by saying steadily—I might almost add solemnly—