"I did not mean to do so. I should be the last one to do so, though I cannot always agree with him. But you take an unfair advantage of the little excitement I feel, to put me in the wrong. Do you think I can look on without being painfully interested, when I see my only sister about to throw herself away upon this obscure stranger, for you cannot conceal it from me that you love him?"
"Throw myself away! Obscure stranger! You are unkind William. Love him! it will be time enough to grant my love when it is asked for. It does not become me, perhaps, to say it, but Mr. Pownal is not here to answer for himself, and for that reason I will defend him. There lives not the woman who might not be proud of the love of so noble and pure a heart. But you are not in a humor to hear reason," she added, rising, "and I will leave you until your returning good sense shall have driven away suspicions equally unfounded and unjust."
"Stay, Anne, stop, sister," cried Bernard, as with a heightened color she hastened out of the room. "She is too much offended," he said to himself, "to heed me, and I must wait for a more favorable opportunity to renew the conversation. I have seen this fancy gradually coming on, and, fool that I was, was afraid to speak for fear of making things worse. I thought it might be only a passing whim, like those which flutter twenty times through girls' silly heads before they are married, and was unwilling to treat it as of any consequence. But does Anne mean to deceive me? It is not at all like her. She never did so before. No, she has courage enough for anything, and is incapable of deception. But these foolish feelings strangely affect young women and—young men, too. She must, herself, be deceived. She cannot be acquainted with the state of her own heart. Yet it may not have gone so far that it cannot be stopped. I had other plans for her, nor will I give them up. Father! mother! Pooh! nothing can be done with them. He would not see her lip quiver or a tear stand in her eye, if it could be prevented at the expense of half his fortune, and mother always thinks both perfection. No, if anything is to be done it must be with Anne herself, or Pownal, perhaps. Yet I would not make the little minx unhappy. But to be the brother-in-law of the son of an insane basket-maker! It is too ridiculous."
No two persons could be more unlike in temperament, and in many respects in the organization of their minds, than William Bernard and his sister. She, the creature of impulse, arriving at her conclusions by a process like intuition: he, calm, thoughtful, deliberately weighing and revising every argument before he made up his mind: she, destitute of all worldly prudence and trusting to the inspirations of an ingenuous and bold nature: he, worldly wise, cautious, and calculating the end from the beginning. Yet were his aspirations noble and untainted with a sordid or mean motive. He would not for a world have sacrificed the happiness of his sister, but he thought it not unbecoming to promote his personal views by her means, provided it could be done without injury to herself. He was a politician, and young as he was his scheming brain already formed plans of family and personal aggrandizement, extending far into the future. Anne was mixed up with these in his mind, and he hoped, by the marriage connection she might form, to increase a family influence in furtherance of his plans. These seemed likely to be defeated by Anne's partiality for Pownal, and the young man felt the disappointment as keenly as his cool philosophical nature would permit. But let it not be thought that William Bernard brought worldly prudence into all his plans. His love of Faith Armstrong had no connection with any such feelings, and she would have been equally the object of his admiration and choice, had she been a portionless maiden instead of the heiress of the wealthy Mr. Armstrong. We will not say that her prospect of succeeding to a large fortune was disagreeable to her lover, but though when he thought of her it would sometimes occur to his mind, yet was it no consideration that corrupted the purity of his affection.
Anne, when she left her brother, hastened to her chamber and subjected her heart to a scrutiny it had never experienced. She was startled upon an examination her brother's language had suggested, to find the interest Pownal had awakened in her bosom. She had been pleased to be in his company, and to receive from him those little attentions which young men are in the habit of rendering to those of the same age of the other sex: a party never seemed complete from which he was absent: there was no one whose hand she more willingly accepted for the dance, or whose praise was more welcome when she rose from the piano: but though the emotions she felt in his presence were so agreeable, she had not suspected them to be those of love. Her brother had abruptly awakened her to the reality. In the simplicity of her innocence, and with somewhat of a maiden shame, she blamed herself for allowing any young man to become to her an object of so much interest, and shrunk from the idea of having at some time unwittingly betrayed herself. She determined, whatever pain it might cost, to reveal to her mother all her feelings, and to be guided by her advice.
True hearted, guileless girl! instinctively she felt that the path of duty leads to peace and happiness.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Oh, how this tyrant, doubt, torments my breast!
My thoughts, like birds, who're frighten'd from their nest,
Around the place where all was hush'd before,
Flutter, and hardly nestle any more.
OTWAY.
Our story now reverts to the Indians, of whom we have for so long made little or no mention. It is in vain for us to attempt to control the course of our tale, and to compel it, as it were, to be content with the artificial banks of a canal, stealing insensibly on, with uniform smoothness, to its terminus. Whatever we may do, it will assert its liberty, and wander in its own way, foaming down rocks and rugged precipices, like a mountain stream, at one moment, at the next, stagnating into a pool, and afterwards gliding off in erratic windings, roaming like Ceres, searching through the world for her lost Proserpine. Not ours to subject the succession of events to our will, but to narrate them with such poor skill as nature and a defective education concede, trusting that a homely sincerity, if it cannot wholly supply the place of art, may palliate its want.