"Oh, but you do not mean to leave me, Heart-of-Life," she cried.
So he swore, by a dozen saints, that she, Miwandi, should be his queen in a palace of white stone above a tropic sea.
CHAPTER XXVII. A GRIM TURN OF MARCH MADNESS
Day by day, Sir Ralph Westleigh's mental sickness increased. It strengthened in the dark, like a blight on corn. Very gradually, and day by day, it grew over the bright surface of his mind and spirit. The sureness of its advance was a fearful thing to watch.
By the time March was over the wilderness, with a hint of spring in the morning skies, the baronet's condition was noticeable to even the dullest inmate of the settlement. The poor gentleman spoke little—and that little was seldom to the point. It seemed as if he had forgotten how to smile, or even to make a pretence at mirth. He walked alone for hours on the frozen river and through the woods. The Beothics of the camp before the fort stood in awe of him. At times he treated Beatrix and Bernard Kingswell as strangers; but he always knew Maggie Stone, and chided her often on the scantiness of his dinners. All day, indoors and out, he wore a rapier at his side. In the cabin he spent half of the time inert by the fire, without book, or cards, or chess, and the rest of it in sword-play with an imaginary antagonist.
It was well for Beatrix that she had found Bernard's love before the fresh misfortune descended upon her. But even with that comfort and inspiration, her father's derangement affected her bitterly. They had been such friends; and now he had blank eyes and deaf ears for all her actions and words. It was twenty times harder for her than to have seen him struck down by knife or arrow. Death seemed an honest thing compared to that coldness and vagueness of spirit that gathered more thickly about him with the passing of each day. It was as if another life, another spirit, had taken possession of the familiar body and beloved features. After two weeks neither her kisses nor her tears had any potency to break through the awful estrangement. Her prayers, her fond recollections of their old companionship, brought no gleam to the dull eye.
By the end of March the busy boat-builders and smiths of the settlement—and every man save Sir Ralph was either one or the other—had two new boats all but completed. They were staunch crafts, of about the capacity and model of the Pelican. They were intended for fishing on the river and the great bays and for exploration cruises.
William Trigget, who was a master shipbuilder as he was a master mariner, entertained great ideas of fishing and trading more openly than Sir Ralph had sanctioned in the past. He was for carving out a real home in the wilderness, and his wife was of the same mind.