Her answer was a delicious smile of recognition, and the offer of her gauntleted right hand.
"I never expected to meet you on this lonely road," said Cary, after recovering a little, in saying which he uttered a most palpable but unconscious falsehood. Else why had he ridden so far? Why had he suffered the torments of doubt and expectation the live-long afternoon? The lady was more direct and simple. The frankness of her reply almost startled Cary from his saddle.
"I expected to meet you, sir," she said, and broke out in one of her merriest laughs.
Explanations followed fast. The lady avowed that she had recognized Cary from the head of the avenue, had purposely avoided going down to meet him at the gate, had taken the bridle-path through her father's grounds instead, with the certainty that he would follow her. She only half intimated the reasons why she acted thus, but her partial reticence was the most charming portion of her revelations, and as he listened Cary was in a very ecstacy of delight. She knew that he would follow her! What adorable feminine ingenuousness in the confession! What consciousness of superiority and power!
The conversation, started from this point, did not flag. The young officer recovered full possession of his senses and the two rode briskly homeward in the roseate twilight which to them seemed the harbinger of a happy dawn flushed with the glories of an Eastern sunrise.
[XVI.]
[AN EPIC MARCH.]
The next day Cary Singleton sat with Zulma and her father in a room of the Sarpy mansion. A great fire glowed in front of them, and at their side was a little table bearing cakes and wine. Cary sat at one angle of the chimney, Sieur Sarpy at the other, and Zulma occupied a low chair in the apex of the semi-circle. After many topics of conversation had been exhausted, and the young officer had been made to feel quite at home, Sieur Sarpy demanded an account of Cary's march with Arnold through the forests of Maine.
"I have heard something about the hardships of that expedition," said he, "and I know enough about the nature of our woods and prairies to understand that yours must have been a particularly trying fate."