Webster saw the young man glance warily about; then, apparently satisfied there was none to spy upon them, he drew the girl gently toward him. She clung to him for nearly a minute, sobbing; then he raised her face tenderly, kissed her, pressed her from him, and walked swiftly away without looking back.
It was a sweet and rather touching little tableau; to John Stuart Webster, imaginative and possessed of a romantic streak in his nature, it was more than a tableau. It was a moving picture!
“I suppose her old man objects to the young fellow,” he muttered to himself sympathetically, “and he can't come near the house. They've met here for the fond farewell, and now the young fellow's going out West to make his fortune, so he can come back and claim the girl. Huh! If he wants her, why the devil doesn't he take her? I'd tell her old man I'd picked on him for my father-in-law, and then if he didn't like me I'd let the old fellow rave; and see how much good it would do him. But the French are different; they always let the old folks step in and rock the boat——- Hello! By Judas priest! Now I know what those two paraqueets are up to. One of them is the father of that girl. They've been spying on the lovers, and now they're going to corner the young fellow and shingle him for his nerve.”
The girl had stood for a moment, gazing after her companion, before she turned with her handkerchief to her eyes, and continued on her way to the cathedral. Webster had observed that the two men ahead of him paid no attention to her, but pressed eagerly forward after the man.
Webster could look across about thirty yards of low shrubbery at the girl as she passed. He heard her sobbing as she stumbled blindly by, and he was distressed about her, for all the world loves a lover and John Stuart Webster was no exception to this universal rule.
“By George, this is pretty tough,” he reflected. “That young fellow treated that girl with as much gentleness and courtesy as any gentleman should, and I'm for him and against this idea of corporal punishment. Don't you worry, Tillie, my dear. I'm going to horn into this game myself if it goes too far.”
The two dusky skulkers ahead of him, having come to another crosspath, turned into it and came out on the main path in the rear of the young man. Webster noticed that they were walking twice as fast as when he had first observed them, and more than ever convinced that presently there might be work for a strong man and true, he hastened after them.
As he came out into the main walk again, he noticed that the pair were still walking on the grass. He padded gently along behind them.
The four were now rapidly approaching the old French market, and the steadily rising babel of voices speaking in French, Italian, Spanish, Creole patois and Choctaw, was sufficient to have drowned the slight noise of the pursuit, even had the young man's mind not been upon other things, and the interest of the two Central Americans centred upon their quarry, to the exclusion, of any thought of possible interruption.
Webster felt instinctively that the two men would rush and make a concerted attack from the rear. He smiled.