"The Lord bless and preserve ye, and keep ye from the bite of a rattlesnake!"
CHAPTER X.
AN UNEXPECTED DECLARATION.
I know it—I feel it—he loves me at last!
The heart-hidden anguish is over and past!
Love brightens his dark eyes, and softens his tone;
He loves me! he loves me—his soul is mine own!
Mrs. Osgood.
In among curtains of amber silk, which made the sunlight more sunny still, came the glow of an October afternoon. The rich atmosphere lay slumberously over the books and pictures and luxurious furniture of Dr. Carollyn's library. He was not in; but occupying his easy-chair, drawn up near the pleasant window, reclined his daughter, motionless, with half-shut eyes, lost in a soft reverie:
"With her head at ease reclining,
On the cushion's velvet lining,
On the velvet, violet-lining, with the sunlight gloating o'er."
The little volume of blue and gold in which she had been reading had fallen away from her hand, and lay half-hidden in the fragrant folds of her dress; some strain of Tennyson's delicious music had thrilled her heart with memories more than hopes, for the dreamy luster of her eyes had a light more of tears than smiles. There was a light shadow on the clear, smooth forehead, a slight compression of the beautiful mouth—as if a word might startle that breathless dream into a shower of tears.
"Dear as remembered kisses after death."
this was the line at which she had dropped the poem, and sunk away into the past. The year just gone slipped out of her life and fell into the sea of oblivion with a sparkle—this house, this home, this father, these splendors, these pleasures slid away—she was not Annie Carollyn, rich, lovely, and flattered—but Elizabeth Wright, a sun-burned, forlorn, and starving girl, sinking down in a pitiless desert, with only a pair of strong arms to link her to life—only a long, long kiss of love and despair to hold her flitting soul until relief came. And where were the arms and where the lips that held her then?