Captain Cavendish, expressing his gratitude once more, lounged into the drear and foggy night. How lucky for the peace of the community at large, we cannot read each other's thoughts. The young captain's ran something after this fashion:
"I always knew Blake was a spoon, but I never thought he was such an infernal scoundrel as this. Why, he is worse than I am; for I really am in love with the girl, and he does his rascality without a single earthly motive. Well, it's all the better for me. I'll have Cherrie as sure as a gun."
Mr. Blake, in the seclusion of his room, leaned back in his chair, and indulged himself in a low and quiet laugh, before commencing work.
"I said I owed you one," he soliloquized, throwing away the stump of his second cigar, "for leading Charley Marsh astray, and now's the time to pay you. If I don't serve you out this go, Captain Cavendish, my name's not Valentine Blake!"
CHAPTER XII.
IN WHICH THE WEDDING COMES OFF.
The foggy day had ended in a stormy night. Black clouds had hurried wildly over the troubled face of the sky; a dull peal of thunder, booming in the distance, had been its herald. Rain, and thunder, and lightning had it all its own way until about midnight, when the sullen clouds had drifted slowly, and the moon showed her fair, sweet face in her place. A day of brightest sunshine, accompanied by a high wind, had been the result; and in its morning refulgence, Captain Cavendish was sauntering along the Redmon road. Not going to the big brick house, surely: Nathalie had told him the picnic day of Mrs. Leroy's growing dislike to visitors, and the hint had been taken. Perhaps it was only for a constitutional, or to kill time; but there he was, lounging in the teeth of the gale, and whistling an opera air as he went. The Nettleby cottage, fairly overrun with its luxuriance of sweetbrier, and climbing roses, and honeysuckle, was a pretty sight, and well worth looking at, and perhaps that was the reason Captain Cavendish stood still to admire it. The windows, all wreathed with crimson and pink roses, were open; and at one sat Cherrie, in all her beauty, like a picture in a frame. The crimson July roses about her were not brighter than her cheeks at the sight of him, and her starry eyes flashed a welcome few men would not have coveted. How prettily she was dressed, too—knowing well he would come, the gypsy!—in pink muslin; her bare neck and arms rising plump and rounded out of the gauziness; all her shining jetty curls flashing about, and sprays of rosebuds twisted through them. How the pale, blue-eyed, snowy-skinned, fair-haired prettiness of Nathalie dimmed in the young officer's ardent imagination beside this tropical, gorgeous loveliness of the sunny South. He opened the little gate, and was at the window before she arose.
"My black-eyed fairy? You look perfectly dazzling this morning. Who is in?"
"No one," said Cherrie, showing her pearl-white teeth in her deepening smile. "The boys are off fishing; father's up working in Lady Leroy's garden, and Ann's gone to town for groceries."