It was a damp bleak morning, and the snow was falling fast. Zulma Sarpy sat in her bedroom, indolently stretched upon a rocking chair before a glowing fire. She was attired in a white morning dress, or peignoir, slightly unbuttoned at the collar, and revealing the glories of a snowy columnar neck, while the hem, negligently raised, displayed two beautiful slippered feet half buried in the plush of a scarlet cushion. Her abundant yellow hair, thrown back in banks of gold over the forehead and behind the rosy ears, was gathered in immense careless coils behind her head and kept in position by a towering comb of pearl. Her two arms were raised to the level of her head, and the two hands held on languidly to the ivory knobs at the top of the chair. On the second finger of the left hand was a diamond ring that flashed like a star. The whole position of the lovely lounger brought out her grand bust into full relief.
Beside her stood a little round table supported on three carven feet of exquisite workmanship, and covered by a beautiful netting of crimson lace. On the table was an open book and several trinkets of female toilet. The table gave the key to the rest of the furniture of the apartment, which was massive, highly wrought and of deep rich colors. The tapestries of the wall were umber and gold; the hangings of the bed and windows were a modulated purple. The room had evidently been arranged with artistic design, and just such a one would be employed to exhibit a statue of white marble to the best effect. Zulma Sarpy was this living, breathing model, fair as a filament of summer gorse, and statuesque in all her poses.
She had been educated in France, according to the custom of many of the wealthy families of the Colony. Although confined for five years—from the age of fourteen to that of nineteen—in the rigid and aristocratic convent of Picpus, she had been enabled to see much of Paris life, during the waning epoch of Louis XVI's reign and the times of morbid fashionable excitement immediately preceding the great Revolution. Her natural disposition, and the curiosity incident to her previous Colonial training, led her to mingle with keen interest in all the forms of French existence, and her character was so deeply impressed by it that when she returned to her Canadian home, a few months before our introduction to her, she was looked upon very much in the light of an exotic. Yet was the heart of Zulma really unspoiled. Her instincts and principles were true. She by no means regarded herself as out of place in her native country, but, on the contrary, felt that she had a mission to fill in it, and, having had more than one opportunity of honorable alliance in France, preferred returning to Canada and spending her days among her own people.
But she had to be taken as she was. If the good simple people around her did not understand her ways, she could afford to leave them in their wonderment without apology or explanation. The standing of her family was so high, and her own spirit so independent, that she felt that she could trace out her own course, without yielding to the narrow and antiquated notions of those whose horizon for generations had never extended beyond the blue line of the St. Lawrence.
Was she thinking of these very things this morning, as she lounged before the fire? Perhaps so. But if she did, the thoughts had no palpable effect upon her. Rather, we fancy, were her thoughts straying upon the incident of three days before, when she had that rattling ride with the handsome British Lieutenant and distanced him out of sight. That glance in her great blue eyes was a reflection of the one which she cast upon the youthful horseman through the little window squares of the farmer's house. That tap of the slippered foot, on the edge of the shining fender, was the gentle stimulant she administered to her pony's flank as he leaped forward to win the race. That smothered, saucy laugh which bubbled on her red, ripe lips was an echo of the peal which greeted Hardinge when he pronounced the name of "Zulma," at the road gate. And as she rolled her fine head slowly to and fro on the velvet bosses of the back of her chair, was she not meditating some further design on the heart of the loyal soldier? Conspiracies deeper than that, designs of love that have rocked kingdoms to their foundation have been formed by languid beauties, recumbent in the soft recesses of their easy chairs.
Zulma had reached the culminating point of her revery and was gradually gliding down the quiet declivities of reaction, when she was aroused by a great uproar in the lower part of the house. She did not at first pay much attention to it, but as the sound grew louder and she recognized the voice of her father, speaking in loud tones of alarm, she sat up in her chair and listened with concern. Presently some one rushed up the stair and precipitated himself into the apartment, without so much as rapping at the door. It was her brother, a youth of about her age, who was at school at the Seminary of Quebec. He evidently had just arrived, being still wrapped up in a blue flannel coat, trimmed with red cloth, hood of the same material, buckskin leggings and rough hide boots. He gave himself a vigorous shake, like a Newfoundland just emerged from the water, and stamped upon the floor to throw off the particles of snow adhering to his feet.
"What means all this disturbance, Eugene?" asked Zulma, holding out one hand, and turning her head over the side of the chair, till her face looked up to the ceiling.
"Oh, nothing, except that the rebels have come!" was the rejoinder, as the youth walked up to his sister, and dropped globules of snow from his gloves into her eyes.
"The what have come?"
"Why, the rebels."