The bullet wound which had prostrated Gilbert Margrave in the forest at Iberville was a very serious one.
For many days and nights he lay in one of the apartments of the Pavilion, near Lake Pontchartrain, in a state which was not entirely without danger.
But he had the best medical attendance which New Orleans could afford, and the tenderest care which affection can secure for the object on which it lavishes its wealth.
Night and day Cora Leslie and the mulatto slave Toby watched beside the pillow of the wounded man.
It was they and they alone who listened to the wandering accents of delirium; they who soothed and comforted in the hour of suffering; they who cheered and animated when the danger was past, and the first faint glimpses of returning health re-illumined the cheek of the invalid.
Gerald Leslie was away from home. When the boat carrying Gilbert Margrave, Cora, Mortimer and Toby reached the Pavilion, the planter had already departed for New York, leaving a few brief lines addressed to his daughter, telling her only that urgent business had called him from the South.
The father and daughter had therefore never met since that hour in which the Octoroon had accused Gerald Leslie of being the cause of her mother's death.
The two months for which the bill, for a hundred thousand dollars due to Silas Craig, had been renewed, were rapidly gliding away, and every day made the position of Gerald Leslie more alarming.
Cora knew nothing of these pecuniary troubles. She thought that her father had deserted his home rather than endure her reproaches, and she bitterly upbraided herself for the cruel words she had spoken to one whose faults were rather those of circumstance, than inclination.
Gilbert Margrave recovered; but he still lingered beneath Gerald Leslie's roof; for the planter had written to him from New York, thanking him earnestly for his championship of Cora, and imploring him to remain at Lake Pontchartrain until his return.