Chapter Thirty One.
A Stream Cleverly Crossed.
The sagittary correspondence could not last for long. They are but lukewarm lovers who can content themselves with a dialogue carried on at bowshot distance. Hearts brimful of passion must beat and burn together—in close proximity—each feeling the pulsation of the other. “If there be an Elysium on earth, it is this!”
Maurice Gerald was not the man—nor Louise Poindexter the woman—to shun such a consummation.
It came to pass: not under the tell-tale light of the sun, but in the lone hour of midnight, when but the stars could have been witnesses of their social dereliction.
Twice had they stood together in that garden grove—twice had they exchanged love vows—under the steel-grey light of the stars; and a third interview had been arranged between them.
Little suspected the proud planter—perhaps prouder of his daughter than anything else he possessed—that she was daily engaged in an act of rebellion—the wildest against which parental authority may pronounce itself.
His own daughter—his only daughter—of the best blood of Southern aristocracy; beautiful, accomplished, everything to secure him a splendid alliance—holding nightly assignation with a horse-hunter!