“Very well,” was her reply; “even better than I expected.”
“Then you are Lady Ortono?” he persisted.
“Yes; that is, I am recorded so. But I choose to be called by my own simple name. I am only unwilling to believe that might makes right.”
“You do not mean to say it was from entirely disinterested motives that you strove so hard for the name of Ortono?” said the stranger, wonderingly. “You had the property restored, had you not?”
“No, Mons. Jerold,” she replied; “I have no wealth, no honor, no family. I honor you and your band, for your steady attachment to each other. I could wish that the business you follow was more lawful, and the firmness you evince was in a better cause. Adieu, Mons. Jerold;” and, with a pleasant smile, and a graceful wave of her thin, white hand, she glided away, leaving the bandit captain laughing at his own inquisitiveness, and vexed that he could not be an equal with the fair girl, who had only her own native pride to support the high position she had taken.
All those long, warm days, Luella had been lingering like a spirit, only half confined to earth; and now the hectic flush burned deeper, and her eyes flashed with renewed brilliancy; the blue veins, like a net-work of azure threads, were traced on her pure brow, and her hands grew more transparent every day.
With the best medical attendance, and the kindest care that could be procured, she felt that she was soon to pass away, and she often spoke of death.
“Bury me down by the water’s edge,” she said one night, when they were watching, from the high windows, the moonlight on the dancing waves. “Not in the sparkling sand here by the friendly tower, but away out, where the shadows are long and dark, where the pure white cliff is rising in the still night, a watcher over the gulf. Then, when night comes again, I will come back to earth and tell you how I live.”
And, before another moon had waxed and waned, Luella slept the sleep that knows no waking. And they buried her under the pure chalky cliff, where she had so often watched the sea-gulls at the approach of a storm.
Arabel and Christa mourned for their sister, but Claud had just become interested in the ideas of America as a grand resort. Arabel was all on the qui vive to go, and, without one regret, with only a parting farewell for Christa, and an earnest, gentle look at Luella’s grave, she entered the boat with a light step and a light heart, and bade adieu to her native land, perhaps forever. When they were far out at sea, the last object on which her eyes rested was the pure white cliff under which Luella slept. When they came in sight of land again it was only a single hour past midnight, but the long, loud cry that rung out from the stationed watch awakened every sleeper, and called up the eager and curious to catch the first glimpse of land.