“For,” said Pet, “exercise is good for the health; and as Aunt Deb won’t let me ride the clothes-horse, I’m going to try this.”
And try it she did, till she tore the dress nearly off her back; and then, getting tired of this, she determined to go over to the Old Barrens Cottage, and see Erminie.
The day was beautiful; so Pet determined to walk. Throwing a light muslin cape over her shoulders, and pulling a broad straw flat down over her eyes, the dark-eyed “heiress, beauty, and belle,” set out, singing as she went.
Somehow, since the return of Ray, Pet had visited the cottage much less frequently than usual and in all probability would not have gone now, only she knew he had gone to Judestown that morning and was not expected back until the next day. Pet saw that he shunned and avoided her: and no matter how easy and natural he had been a moment before, the instant she entered he wrapped himself in his very coldest mantle of reserve, and looked more like a banished prince than common Christian. Pet saw this; and her own heart, as proud as his in another way, swelled with wounded feeling and indignation; and she inwardly vowed to let him see that she cared just as little for him as he could possibly care for her. Poor Pet! this conviction and resolution cost her the first bitter tears she had ever shed in her whole sunshiny life; but as she felt them falling warm and fast, she sprung quickly up, dashed them indignantly away, as if ashamed to own even to her own heart how much she cared for him.
“No; he shall never know that I cared two pins about him!” exclaimed Pet, with flashing eyes and flushing cheeks. “He dislikes me; I can see that plainly enough; and if he was a prince of the blood royal, I would not stoop to sue for his favor. I don’t care for him; I won’t care for him. I just hate him—a stiff, haughty, young Turk—there now!”
And then having relieved her mind by a “real good cry,” Pet got up and whistled to her dogs, and set off for a scamper round the yard, to the great detriment of her gaiters, and the alarming increase of her appetite. Pet wasn’t sentimental; so she neither took to sighing nor star-gazing, nor writing poetry; but pursued the even, or rather uneven, tenor of her way, and inwardly vowed that, “if nobody cared for her, she would care for nobody.”
Little did Pet know the real cause of Ray’s avoidance. High-spirited and proud, almost morbid in his pride at times, and loving this dazzling, sparkling vision of beauty and brightness more and more every time he saw her, he felt it his duty to shun her as much as possible. To know this star-eyed, dazzling, dancing fay without loving her was a simple impossibility; and Ray Germaine, with his passionate admiration of beauty, and fiery gipsy blood, loved her with an intensity that only hot, passionate, Southern natures like his can feel. And with this mad love was the certain conviction that he might as well love a “bright, particular star,” and hope to win it, as the wealthy heiress of Judge Lawless, who was soon destined to make her début in the gilded salons of Washington city, where all the lions of the capital would soon be in adoration at her feet. And he—what was he? The grandson of a gipsy woman, educated by the bounty of a stranger. What was he that he should dare to lift his eyes to this peerless beauty and belle? Proud, as we have said he was, to excess, he shunned and avoided her for whom he would have given up the wide world and all it contained, has he possessed it, lest in some unguarded moment he should divulge the one secret of his fierce and daily increasing love.
And in this unpleasant way matters stood on the day when Pet set out from Heath Hill to Old Barrens Cottage. Pet was a good walker; but, owing to the intense heat, she was completely tired out by the time she reached the cottage. Erminie alone was there, ready to welcome her friend with her own peculiar sunshiny smile.
It was very pleasant, that cool, breezy sitting-room, that scorchingly hot day, with its plain straw matting, its cool, green, Venetian blinds, its plump, tempting, cushioned rocking-chairs, and fragrant bouquets of flowers in glasses of pure, sparkling water. But the prettiest, pleasantest sight of all was its lovely young mistress in her simple, beautifully-fitting dress of blue gingham, with its snowy collar and little black silk apron boasting the cunningest pockets in the world; her shiny hair floating twined in broad damp braids round her superb little head; and where the sunshine lingered lovingly upon it, seeming like a shining glory over her smooth white brow. Yes, it was very pleasant—the pretty cottage-room; the lovely cottage maiden; and yet the dark, bright, dazzling brunette in her glancing shot silk, with her flashing jetty curls, her lustrous, splendid Syrian eyes, of midnight blackness; her whole vivacious, restless, glittering, entrancing face and form lost nothing by contrast with any one in the world.
“Well, I declare, Ermie, I don’t know any place in the wide world half as cool and pleasant as this cottage of yours. Now, at Heath Hill it’s enough to roast an African. Goodness! how hot I am!” said Pet, commencing to fan herself vigorously.