As the Colonel did not, and would not, shift his quarters, the conversation grew common-place until at length it became absolutely irksome to Hal, and he rose to depart.
Flora fancied that, as he bade her farewell, his tone was cold, and she missed the pressure of his hand. She knew, too, his eye was averted, and he lingered not as usual upon the threshold of the door, but he went away and never looked back to meet the gaze she directed to him—and which meant to say “adieu,” with an expression she could not trust to her words nor to her soft fingers—but he looked not back once—no, not once!
Yet, when without the house, he directed his steps to the nearest entry to the park, and paused not until he gained a spot, where he could look upon the lighted window of the room in which he knew she sat, thinking, perhaps, of the gentleman who had that day been first presented to her, and was shortly to be little else than a constant companion.
“Oh, Flora, dearest!” he murmured, compressing his hands tightly, “it was a dream—a happy, happy dream! I wake to misery. You can never, never be mine; it would be only mad presumption to entertain longer a hope so blissful—oh, so very blissful! You will wed some one higher, nobler than myself, for you are of proud and high descent, and I but humbly born. If in this your happiness be secured, I love you far, far too well to seek or wish a change. I can only hope and pray that he who wins you may love you as truly, as fondly, as devotedly as I do.”
He paused, for his throat swelled, and there was a gush of water in his eyes that made the lighted window upon which they rested dim and indistinct.
“What now shall be my future course?” he continued with deep emotion; “my ambition is strangled in its birth. Fame! what have I to do with fame? sought only that my hour of triumph should be rewarded by her sweet smile of joy. What to me the rank in which high success would place me, if her eyes, glowing with gratified pride at sight of the honours I had won, were lost to me? No; life hath no more a motive to render it worth its endurance. A rifle and the prairies of the Far West shall be my world; there at least in the vast solitudes I can, uninterrupted, dwell upon her memory, revel in glorious visions of her angel face”——
A hand placed lightly upon his shoulder interrupted his soliloquy.
He turned sharply to find at his side Colonel Mires.
“A word with you,” he said to Hal, abruptly. “Follow me.”
“No!” returned Hal, coldly. “What you can have to say to me can as well be said here as elsewhere. We are unobserved.”