"You seem to have had a pleasant time," he said aloud, "I think I never saw you look quite so cheery."
Kenneth only smiled, he felt so free and happy, as light and joyous as a bird on the wing.
"I congratulate you on your good luck, whatever it may have been," continued Lyttleton, still eyeing him curiously; "and I must ask a return in kind from you, for I too have been made a happy, yes, the very happiest of men to-day."
Clendenin turned upon him a startled, questioning look, his very lips growing white; he tried to speak, but could not find his voice.
"Yes," Lyttleton went on with a cruel delight in the pain he saw he was giving; "I am sure you will think so when I tell you that Miss Lamar is my promised wife and I shall soon be the husband of the finest woman in America."
Kenneth answered not a word, the blow was so sudden, so terrible, so stunning; for it never occurred to him that those words which sounded the death knell of his fondest hopes were a falsehood, and, ah! he had thought it impossible that Nell could ever give herself to one so utterly devoid of noble qualities as this stranger who was now boasting of having won her.
Lyttleton perceived with savage exultation how he had wrung the heart of the man whom he hated;—hated all the more bitterly because he owed him his life and because of his own ill-desert as a trifler with sweet Marian's affections: whose sworn foe he was even before leaving England for America; his very errand to this country being one of wrong to him, an errand which he now foresaw was likely to miscarry through the information gleaned from the white squaw of the Shawnee brave.
They were passing a farm-house; some one standing at its gate hailed the doctor, and with a slight parting inclination of the head to Lyttleton, Kenneth turned aside and obeyed the call.
The sun was touching the top of the hill which bounds Chillicothe on the west, as he resumed his homeward way, a different man from the one who had left Old Town so full of joy and glad anticipation; the very dropping of his figure, as he moved slowly along with the bridle lying loosely upon Romeo's neck, spoke of utter dejection.
What was life worth without his love, his darling? Oh, why had not this knowledge come to him a little sooner, this that unsealed his lips. Why had he not yielded to his impulse that stormy night as they stood alone together by the fire, and poured out the story of his love? How much wiser and kinder to have done it, even though he had to tell her, too, that an impassable barrier stood between them!