"Then, if not to fulfil that compact, wherefore are you here?" and the question was put half querulously, half contemptuously.
"Chance, Destiny, Fate,—call it what you will," cried Gerald, obeying the stronger impulse of his feelings, and clasping her once more to his beating heart. "Oh! Matilda, if you knew how the idea of that fearful condition has haunted me in my thoughts by day, and my dreams by night, you would only wonder that at this moment I retain my senses, filled as my soul is with maddening—with inextinguishable love for you."
"And do you really entertain for me that deep, that excessive passion you have just expressed," at length observed Matilda, after some moments of silence, and with renewed tenderness of voice and manner, "and yet refuse the means by which you may secure me to you for ever?"
"Matilda," said Gerald, with vehemence, "my passion for you is one which no effort of my reason can control; but let me not deceive you—it is NOW one of the senses."
An expression of triumph, not wholly unmingled with scorn, animated the features of Matilda. It was succeeded by one of ineffable tenderness.
"We will talk of this no more tonight, Gerald, but tomorrow evening, at the same hour, be here: then our mutual hopes, and fears, and doubts shall be then realized or disappointed, as the event may show. Tomorrow will determine if, as I cannot but believe, Destiny has sent you to me at this important hour. It is very singular," she added, as if to herself, her features again becoming deadly pale—"very singular, indeed!"
"What is singular, Matilda?" asked Gerald.
"You shall know all tomorrow," she replied; "but mind," and her dark eye rested on his with an expression of much tenderness, "that you come prepared to yield me all I ask."
Gerald promised that he would, and Matilda, expressing a desire to hear what had so unexpectedly restored him to her presence, he entered into a detail of all that had befallen him from the moment of their separation. She appeared to be much touched by the relation, and, in return, gave him a history of what she too had felt and suffered. She, moreover, informed him that Major Montgomerie had died of his wound shortly after their parting, and that she had now been nearly two months returned to her uncle's estate at Frankfort, where she lived wholly secluded from society, and with a domestic establishment consisting of slaves. These short explanations having been entered into, they parted—Matilda to enter her dwelling, (the same Gerald had remarked in outline,) in which numerous lights were now visible, and her lover to make the best of his way to the town.