"Nay, Gerald—recollect, that then I had not learnt to know you as I do now—I will not deny that when first I saw you, a secret instinct told me you were one whom I would have deeply loved had I never loved before; but betrayed and disappointed as I had been, I looked upon all men with a species of loathing—my kind, good, excellent more than father, excepted—and yet, Gerald, there were moments when I wished even him dead" (Gerald started)—"yes! dead—because I knew the anguish that would crush his heart, if he should ever learn that the false brand of the assassin had been affixed to the brow of his adopted child." Matilda sighed profoundly, and then resumed. "Later, however, when the absence of its object had in some degree abated the keenness of my thirst for revenge, and when more frequent intercourse had made me acquainted with the generous qualities of your mind, I loved you, Gerald, although I would not avow it, with a fervor I had never believed myself a second time capable of entertaining."
Again the countenance of Matilda was radiant with the expression just alluded to by her lover. Gerald gazed at her as though his very being hung upon the continuance of that fascinating influence, and again he clasped her to his heart.
"Matilda! oh, my own betrothed Matilda!" he murmured.
"Yes, your own betrothed," repeated the American, highly excited, "the wife of your affection and your choice, who has been held up to calumny and scorn. Think of that, Gerald; she on whose fond bosom you are to repose your aching head, she who glories in her beauty only because it is beauty in your eyes, has been betrayed, accused of a vile passion for a slave; yet he—the fiend who has done this grievous wrong—he who has stamped your wife with ignominy, and even published her shame—still lives. Within a week," she resumed in a voice hoarse from exhaustion, "yes, within a week, Gerald he will be here—perhaps to deride and contemn you for the choice you have made."
"Within a week he dies," exclaimed the youth. "Matilda, come what will, he dies. Life is death without you, and with you even crime may sit lightly on my soul. But we will fly far from the habitations of men. The forest shall be my home, and when the past recurs to me you shall smile upon me with that smile, look upon me with that look, and I will forget all. Yes," he pursued, with a fierce excitement snatching up the holy book, and again carrying it to his lips, "once more I repeat my oath. He who has thus wronged you, my own Matilda, dies—dies by the hand of Gerald Grantham—of your affianced husband."
There was another long embrace, after which the plan of operations was distinctly explained and decided upon. They then separated for the night—the infatuated Gerald, with a load of guilt at his heart no effort of his reason could remove, returning by the route he had followed on the preceding evening to his residence in the town.
[CHAPTER XXVIII.]
Leaving the lost Gerald for a time to all the horrors of his position, in which it would be difficult to say whether remorse or passion (each intensest of its kind) predominated, let us return to the scene where we first introduced him to the reader, and take a review of the military events passing in that quarter.
After the defeat of the British columns at Sandusky, so far from any renewed attempts being made to interrupt the enemy in his strongholds, it became a question whether the position on the Michigan frontier could be much longer preserved. To the perseverance and promptitude of the Americans, in bringing new armies into the field, we have already had occasion to allude; but there was another quarter in which their strength had insensibly gathered, until it eventually assumed an aspect that carried apprehension to every heart. Since the loss of their flotilla at Detroit, in the preceding year, the Americans had commenced with vigour to equip one at Buffalo, which was intended to surpass the naval force on Lake Erie; and so silently and cautiously had they accomplished this task, that it was scarcely known at Amherstburg that a squadron was in the course of preparation, when that squadron, to which had been added the schooner captured from Gerald Grantham the preceding autumn, suddenly appeared off the harbor, defying their enemies to the combat. But the English vessels were in no condition to cope with so powerful an enemy, and although many a gallant spirit burned to be led against those who so evidently taunted them, the safety of the garrisons depended too much on the issue, for that issue to be lightly tempted.