Nearly half a year had now elapsed since that sorrowful night when she had fled from home—six of the darkest months in all Georgia's life. For the first four she had heard no news of any of those she had left, not even of him who, sleeping or waking, was ever uppermost in her thoughts. But one morning, at breakfast, Mr. Leonard had read aloud that our "gifted young follow-citizen, Mr. Richmond Wildair, had returned from abroad, and having re-entered the political world, which he was so well fitted to adorn, had been elected to the legislature, where he had already distinguished himself as a statesman of extraordinary merit and profound wisdom, notwithstanding his extreme youth." Then there was another brief paragraph, in which a mysterious allusion was made to some dark, domestic calamity that had befallen the young statesman; but before Mr. Leonard could finish it he was startled to see the governess make an effort to rise from her seat and fall heavily back in her chair. Then there was a cry that Miss Randall was fainting, and a glass of water was held to her lips, and when, in a moment, she was her own calm, cold self again, she arose and hastily left the room.
But from that day Georgia made a point every morning, with feverish interest, to read the political papers in search of that one loved name. And in every one of them it continually met her eye, lauded to the skies by his friends and followers, and loaded with the fiercest abuse by his enemies. There were long, eloquent speeches of his, glowing, fiery, living, impassioned bursts of eloquence, that sent a thrill to the heart of all who heard him, and swept away all obstacles before the force of its own matchless logic.
A great question was then in agitation, and the young orator, as the champion of humanity and equal rights, flung himself into the thickest of the political melee and was soon the reigning demi-god of his party. It was well known he was soon to be sent as a Representative to Congress, and the knowing ones predicted for him the highest honors the political strife could yield—perhaps at some future day the Presidency of the United States. His name and fame were already resounding through the land, and morning, noon, and night, Mr. Leonard, who was the fiercest of politicians, was talking and raving of the matchless talents of this rising star.
And Georgia, how did she listen to all this. All she had hitherto endured seemed nothing in comparison to the anguish she felt in his evident utter forgetfulness of her. All the pride, and triumph, and exultation, she would have felt in his success was swallowed up in the misery of knowing she was forgotten—as completely forgotten as if she had never existed. And oh, the humiliation she felt, when in the papers of the opposition party, she saw herself dragged in as a slur, a disgrace, in his private life. The sneering insinuations that the wife of Richmond Wildair had deserted him—had eloped—had been driven from home by his ill-treatment; these were worse to her than death. She could almost fancy his cursing her in the bitterness of his heart when his eyes would fall on this, for having disgraced him as she had done.
On this morning, as she stood on the veranda, with a paper in her hand containing an unusually brilliant speech of the gifted young statesman, her thoughts wandering to the days long past when she had first known him, Miss Maggie came dancing out with sparkling eyes, and eagerly accosted her.
"Oh, Miss Randall! only think! papa is going to give a splendid dinner-party, and going to have lots of these political big-wigs here. You know, I suppose, that they, or rather that Mr. Wildair, has gained that horrid question about something or other the papers have been making such a time about?"
"Yes," murmured the white lips, faintly.
"Well, papa's been so dreadfully tickled about it, though why I can't see, that he is going to give this dinner-party, and have lots of those great guns at it, and at their head Mr. Wildair himself, the greatest gun of the lot. Only think of that!"
Georgia had averted her head, and Miss Maggie did not see the deadly paleness that overspread her face, blanching even her very lips, at the words. There was no reply, and shaking back her curls coquettishly, that young lady went on:
"I'm just dying to see Mr. Wildair, you know, everybody is making such a fuss about him; and I do like famous men, of all things. They say he is young and handsome, but whether he is married or not I never can rightly discover; some of the papers say he was, and that he didn't treat his wife well, and Mr. Brown from New York, who was here yesterday, says she committed suicide—isn't that dreadful? But I don't care; I'm bound to set my cap for him, and I guess I can manage to get along with him. I should like to see the man would make me commit suicide, that's all! But it may not be true, you know; these horrid papers tell the most shocking fibs about any one they don't like. I wish Dick Curtis were here; he knows all about him, I've heard, but he hasn't called for ever so many ages. Maybe I won't blow him up when I see him, and then I'll pardon him on condition that he tells me all about Mr. Wildair. He is going to be a senator one of these days, and a governor, and a president, and an ambassador, and ever so many other nice things, and there is nothing I would like better than being Madame L'Ambassadrice, and shining in foreign courts, though I am the daughter of a red-hot republican. Ha! ha! don't I know how to build castles in Spain, Miss Randall? Poor dear Signor Popkins! what would he say if he heard me?"