“I tell you what, mamma alarms herself unnecessarily, and puts but poor reliance on me. I understand it all, but as a trip to New York is a most delightful medicine, I am willing to take it, and that she should consider my health in a precarious state.”
“But you do look pale and thin, Mercita.”
“Nonsense!” Mercedes exclaimed. “I have been keeping late hours, and dancing too much. If I go to bed early I shall get back my good color and flesh again. However, I am glad to play the invalid until I get on board the cars.”
“Very well. I'll be alarmed for you, too, until we get off.”
Mercedes laughed, and went to her room singing, but once there her gayety vanished. She locked her door, and threw herself on the bed, burying her face in her pillow to stifle her sobs.
“Can anything tear his image from my heart? No. Nothing! nothing! They may send me away to the other end of the world, they shall not part us, for you will still fill my heart, my own darling, holding my very soul forever in full possession.”
Mercedes, being not quite seventeen, her grief at parting from Clarence was wild, vehement and all-absorbing. But she had been trained to obedience, and her battles with the spirit always took place after she carefully locked her bedroom door. Then Clarence was wildly apostrophized, and a torrent of tears relieved the overcharged, aching heart.
The day of departure arrived, and she had not had one minute's conversation alone with Clarence.
CHAPTER X.—But Clarence Must Not be Encouraged.
The wharf was over-crowded. The steamer was about to leave. The last car-load of baggage had been quickly shipped, and Clarence had not been able to say a word to Mercedes which might not have been heard by the persons surrounding her. He was pale and desperate. He had gone on board the steamer just to ask her one question, but she had never been alone for an instant. And thus they must part,—for the embodied “Fuerza del destino” now came in the shape of a boy clanging in deafening clatter a most discordant bell, saying that those who were not going on the steamer must go ashore. A hurried hand-shaking, and the troop of friends marched down the gang-plank to turn round and look many more tender adieus from the wharf.