“Keep you from me! Surely Miss Vaughan don’t object to your meeting me?”
“No—not that. Something I fear me hinder from be—.”
“Be what?” inquired the lover, seeing that his sweetheart hesitated to pronounce some word, the thought of which was causing her to blush. “Come, dear Yola, don’t fear to tell me. You know we’re engaged. There should be no secret between us. What were you going to say?”
In a low, murmured voice, and looking lovingly in his eyes as she spoke, the girl pronounced the word “marry.”
“Ho! ho!” exclaimed the lover, in a confident tone. “I think nothing can occur to hinder that—at least, for a very long time. I have now nearly a hundred pounds laid by, and a lucky capture I’ve just made this morning will help still further to make up that sum. Surely the Custos will not require more than a hundred pounds; though if you were once mine,” continued the speaker, casting a look of smiling fondness upon his sweetheart’s face, “all the money in the world wouldn’t tempt me to part with you. I hope,” added he, speaking in a jocular air, “a hundred pounds will be enough to make you my slave?”
“You slave, Cubina?”
“Yes, Yola, as I am yours now.”
“Ah—that way, Yola yours; yours ever—evermore.”
“I will believe you, dear girl,” rejoined the lover, gazing, with a gratified look, in the face of his beloved. “I am very happy to think that in that way you are mine; and that I have, as you assure me, your heart and soul. But, dearest Yola, so long as another is the owner of your body—not with the right, but the powder to do, ay—indeed, almost as he might please—for who can hinder these proud planters from committing crimes of which they are their own judges? Ah! Yola, girl, it is fearful to reflect on their wicked doings. This very morning I have come across a sample of their cruelty; and when I think of you being in the power of one, it makes me feel as if every hour was a day until I can obtain your freedom. I am always in fear lest something may happen to hinder me.
“Just to-day I am in high hopes,” continued the lover, evincing the truth of his words by a pleasant smile. “I have succeeded in raising nearly the hundred pounds; and the bounty I expect to receive for the runaway I have caught will make it quite that.”