"How so, sir?"
"My sister much regretted not being able to receive you, yesterday, and I should have shared those regrets, had she not chosen me to bring you her excuses."
"It is not an excuse which I require, Mr. Horton, but an explanation," replied Cora, with dignity.
Augustus shrugged his shoulders.
"What further explanations can you require, Miss Leslie," he said; "the preparations of her approaching marriage? A little touch of headache, perhaps? Is not this sufficient to explain all?"
"No, sir, it is not. Because I would rather hear the truth, bitter as that truth may be, than these courteous mockeries which put me to the rack. Mr. Percy's opposition to my return to America; my father's emotion on beholding me; the strange isolation in which I am kept; and, lastly, your sister's extraordinary conduct of yesterday—all these prove to me that some terrible fatality overshadows me; a fatality of which I am ignorant, but which I am determined to discover."
"Nay, Miss Leslie, what is that you would seek to know? Why not be content to reign by your grace and beauty? For the fatality of which you speak can cast no cloud upon your loveliness; and even the jealousy of our wives and sisters cannot rob you of your sovereignty."
"I do not understand you, sir."
"And yet I endeavored to make myself understood. Ah, Miss Leslie! we are but strangers, newly met, within this hour; but we Creoles are the children of a southern clime, and our passions are gigantic as the palms which wave above your head—rapid in growth as the lilies on the breast of yonder lake. Love, with us, is a flame; suppressed, it is true, yet needing but one spark from the torch of beauty to cause a conflagration."
"Sir!" cried Cora, indignantly.