It was only in the afternoon of the day—after the excursion to the Jumbé Rock—that the maid had imparted this piece of intelligence to her mistress: and the altered demeanour of the latter during the rest of the evening proved how interesting it must have been to her. Her anxiety was scarce of the sorrowful kind, but rather tinged with an air of cheerfulness—as if some secret instinct had infused into her spirit a certain buoyancy—as if on the dark horizon of her future there was still lingering, or had suddenly arisen, a faint ray of hope.
Yola had not told all she knew. She said nothing of certain surmises that had escaped the lips of Cubina. With a woman’s tact, she perceived that these, being only conjectural, might excite false hopes in the breast of her young mistress: for whom the girl felt a true affection. In fear of this, she kept back the allusion to the marriage of Herbert and Judith, and its probable failure, which Cubina had so emphatically illustrated by a proverb.
Yola intended this reserve to be only temporary—only until after her next meeting with her lover—from which she hoped to return with a fuller power of explaining it.
Neither had she made known to her mistress the circumstance of having seen Cynthia in company with the Jew, and the conference that had occurred between them, overheard by herself and Cubina—much less the suspicions to which the latter had given expression.
Under the apprehension that a knowledge of these strange facts and suspicions might trouble her young mistress, she had withheld them.
The young Creole had not retired to rest when Yola took her departure from the house, nor yet for long after. Anxious to know the result of the interview between her maid and the Maroon, she remained awake within her chamber—burning the midnight lamp far into the hours of morning.
Notwithstanding the more than permission that had been accorded to her, the princess-slave stole softly from the house—passing the precincts of the mansion, and traversing the grounds outside with considerable caution. This partly arose from the habit of that half-barbaric life, to which, in her own country and from earliest childhood, she had been accustomed. But there was also, perhaps, some suspicion of present danger, or, at all events, that fear of interruption natural to one on the way to keep an appointment of the kind towards which she was now betaking herself.
From whatever motive sprung her cautious behaviour, it was not sufficient to prevent her departure from being observed; nor did it enable her to perceive that thing of woman’s shape that, like an evil shadow, flitted after her across the fields, and went following her along the forest path.
Whenever she turned it also turned, only not preserving an erect bearing, nor going in the same continuous gait; but every now and then pausing upon the path, sometimes in crouched attitude, as if seeking concealment under the shadow of the bushes—then gliding rapidly onward to make stop as before.