On passing many a spot, endeared to her—sacred by some of the sweetest souvenirs of her life—her thoughts experienced more than one revulsion.
These were moments when she forgot the motive that originally impelled her to the journey—when she thought only of reaching the man she loved, to rescue him from enemies that might be around him!
Ah! these moments—despite the apprehension for her lover’s safety—were happy, when compared with those devoted to the far more painful contemplation of his treachery.
From the point of starting to that of her destination, it was twenty miles. It might seem a journey, to one used to European travelling—that is in the saddle. To the prairie equestrian it is a ride of scarce two hours—quick as a scurry across country, after a stag or fox.
Even with an unwilling steed it is not tedious; but with that lithe-limbed, ocellated creature, Luna, who went willingly towards her prairie home, it was soon over—too soon, perhaps, for the happiness of her rider.
Wretched as Louise Poindexter may have felt before, her misery had scarce reached the point of despair. Through her sadness there still shone a scintillation of hope.
It was extinguished as she set foot upon the threshold of the jacalé; and the quick suppressed scream that came from her lips, was like the last utterance of a heart parting in twain.
There was a woman within the hut!
From the lips of this woman an exclamation had already escaped, to which her own might have appeared an echo—so closely did the one follow the other—so alike were they in anguish.
Like a second echo, still more intensified, was the cry from Isidora; as turning, she saw in the doorway that woman, whose name had just been pronounced—the “Louise” so fervently praised, so fondly remembered, amidst the vagaries of a distempered brain.