He heard their vows; their mutual confessions of love; the determination of the mustanger to be gone by the break of the morrow’s day; as also his promise to return, and the revelation to which that promise led.
With bitter chagrin, he heard how this determination was combated by Louise, and the reasons why she at length appeared to consent to it.
He was witness to that final and rapturous embrace, that caused him to strike his foot nervously against the pebbles, and make that noise that had scared the cicadas into silence.
Why at that moment did he not spring forward—put a termination to the intolerable tête-à-tête—and with a blow of his bowie-knife lay his rival low—at his own feet and that of his mistress? Why had he not done this at the beginning—for to him there needed no further evidence, than the interview itself, to prove that his cousin had been dishonoured?
There was a time when he would not have been so patient. What, then, was the punctilio that restrained him? Was it the presence of that piece of perfect mechanism, that, with a sheen of steel, glistened upon the person of his rival, and which under the bright moonbeams, could be distinguished as a “Colt’s six-shooter?”
Perhaps it may have been. At all events, despite the terrible temptation to which his soul was submitted, something not only hindered him from taking an immediate vengeance, but in the mid-moments of that maddening spectacle—the final embrace—prompted him to turn away from the spot, and with an earnestness, even keener than he had yet exhibited, hurry back in the direction of the house: leaving the lovers, still unconscious of having been observed, to bring their sweet interview to an ending—sure to be procrastinated.