"Georgia!"
"I listen, mynheer."
"Suppose you loved somebody very much—"
"A mighty absurd supposition to begin with. I never intend to do any such thing."
"Now, Georgia, be serious. Suppose you loved some one with all your heart, if you possess such an article, you flinty female anaconda, and they professed to love you, and afterward deceived you, what would you do?"
"Do!" her face darkened, her eyes blazed, her lips sprung quivering apart, her hands clenched; "do! I should BLAST them with my vengeance; I would live for revenge, I would die for revenge! I would track them over the world like a sleuth-hound. I would defy even death by the power of my own will until I had wreaked this doom on their devoted head. Deceive me! Safer would it be to tamper with the lightning's chain than with the heart that beats here."
She struck her breast and rose to her feet transformed! The terrific look that had started him in the pictured face, flamed up in her living one now, and she stood like a young Medusa, ready to blight all on whom her dark, scorching glance might rest.
He stood appalled before her. Was she acting, or was this storm of passion real? It was a relief to him to see one of his own servants approaching at that moment with a letter in his hand. The presence of a third person restored Georgia to herself, and, leaning against a tree, she looked darkly over the smiling, shining waters.
"From Charley!" was Richmond's joyful exclamation, as he glanced at the superscription of the letter and dismissed the man who brought it. "It is nearly six months since he wrote last, and we were all getting seriously uneasy about him. Will you excuse me while I read it, Georgia?"
Georgia bent her head in token of acquiescence, and taking up another piece of paper, began carelessly drawing a scaffold, with herself hanging, to horrify her companion. So absorbed did she become in her task, that she did not observe the long silence of her companion, until suddenly lifting her eyes, she beheld a startling sight.