From this state of calm she was roused by the sudden cessation of the music; and looking up, she beheld, with a renewal of all her alarms, a tall man, standing before her, his face and figure both enveloped in the folds of a huge blanket, from which, however, a pair of gleaming eyes were seen riveted upon her own countenance. At the same time, she observed that the old Indian woman had risen, and was stealing softly from the apartment. Filled with terror, she would have rushed after the hag, to claim her protection: but she was immediately arrested by the visitor, who, seizing her by the arm firmly, yet with an air of respect, and suffering his blanket to drop to the ground, displayed to her gaze features that had long dwelt, its darkest phantoms, upon her mind. As he seized her, he muttered, and still with an accent of the most earnest respect,—"Fear me not, Edith; I am not yet an enemy."
His voice, though one of gentleness, and even of music, completed the terrors of the captive, who trembled in his hand like a quail in the clutches of a kite, and would, but for his grasp, as powerful to sustain as to oppose, have fallen to the floor. Her lips quivered, but they gave forth no sound; and her eyes were fastened upon his with a wildness and intensity of glare that showed the fascination, the temporary self-abandonment of her spirit.
"Fear me not, Edith Forrester," he repeated, with a voice even more soothing than before: "You know me;—I am no savage;—I will do you no harm."
"Yes,—yes,—yes," muttered Edith at last, but in the tones of an automaton, they were, at first, so broken and inarticulate, though they gathered force and vehemence as she spoke—"I know you,—yes, yes, I do know you, and know you well. You are Richard Braxley,—the robber, and now the persecutor of the orphan; and this hand that holds me is red with the blood of my cousin. Oh, villain! villain! are you not yet content?"
"The prize is not yet won," replied the other, with a smile that seemed intended to express his contempt of the maiden's invectives, and his ability to forgive them: "I am indeed Richard Braxley,—the friend of Edith Forrester, though she will not believe it,—a rough and self-willed one, it may be, but still her true and unchangeable friend. Where will she look for a better? Anger has not alienated, contempt has not estranged me: injury and injustice still find me the same. I am still Edith Forrester's friend; and such, in the sturdiness of my affection, I will remain, whether my fair mistress will or no. But you are feeble and agitated: sit down and listen to me. I have that to say which will convince my thoughtless fair the day of disdain is now over."
All these expressions, though uttered with seeming blandness, were yet accompanied by an air of decision and even command, as if the speaker were conscious the maiden was fully in his power, and not unwilling she should know it. But his attempt to make her resume her seat upon the pile of skins from which she had so wildly started at his entrance, was resisted by Edith; who, gathering courage from desperation, and shaking his hand from her arm, as if snatching it from the embraces of a serpent, replied with even energy,—"I will not sit down,—I will not listen to you. Approach me not—touch me not. You are a villain and murderer, and I loathe, oh! unspeakably loathe, your presence. Away from me, or—"
"Or," interrupted Braxley with the sneer of a naturally mean and vindictive spirit, "you will cry for assistance! From whom do you expect it? From wild, murderous, besotted Indians, who, if roused from their drunken slumbers, would be more like to assail you with their hatchets than to weep for your sorrows? Know, fair Edith, that you are now in their hands;—that there is not one of them, who would not rather see those golden tresses hung blackening in the smoke from the rafters of his wigwam, than floating over the brows they adorn—Look aloft: there are ringlets of young and fair, the innocent and tender, swinging above you!—Learn, moreover, that from these dangerous friends there is none who can protect you, save me. Ay, my beauteous Edith," he added, as the captive, overcome by the representation of her perils so unscrupulously, nay, so sternly made, sank almost fainting upon the pile, "it is even so; and you must know it. It is needful you should know what you have to expect, if you reject my protection. But that you will not reject; in faith, you cannot! The time has come, as I told you it would, when your disdainful scruples—I speak plainly, fair Edith!—are to be at an end. I swore to you—and it was when your scorn and unbelief were at the highest—that you should yet smile upon the man you disdained, and smile upon no other. It was a rough and uncouth threat for a lover; but my mistress would have it so. It was a vow breathed in anger: but it was a vow not meant to be broken. You tremble! I am cruel in my wooing; but this is not the moment for compliment and deception. You are mine, Edith: I swore it to myself—ay, and to you. You cannot escape. You have driven me to extremities; but they have succeeded. You are mine; or you are—nothing."
"Nothing let it be," said Edith, over whose mind, prone to agitation and terror, it was evident the fierce and domineering temper of the individual could exercise an irresistible control, and who, though yet striving to resist, was visibly sinking before his stern looks and menacing words;—"let it be nothing! Kill me, if you will, as you have already killed my cousin. Oh! mockery of passion, of humanity, of decency, to speak to me thus;—to me, the relative, the more than sister of him you have so basely and cruelly murdered!"
"I have murdered no one," said Braxley, with stony composure: "and if you will but listen patiently, you will find I am stained by no crime save that of loving a woman who forces me to woo her like a master, rather than a slave. Your cousin is living and in safety."
"It is false," cried Edith, wringing her hands; "with my own eyes I saw him fall, and fall covered with blood!"