“Do you really care?” he cried, pressing the fluttering little hand in both of his.
She lifted up her face, the soft brown eyes swimming in tears. “I wouldn't mind,” she replied, half laughing and half sobbing—“I wouldn't mind at all about the pedigree, and I know you're not an old selling-plater; but if you were, I am very sure that I would care for you.”
The Lexington meeting was over, and the horsemen were scattered far and wide, from Chicago to Sheepshead Bay. Colonel Bill alone remained behind. As the days passed and he made no preparation to depart, old Elias's irritation grew apace, and the lives of the stable-boys under the increasing rigor of his rule became almost unendurable. The Colonel, however, saw very little of Elias or the stable-boys. Even his beloved horses no longer interested him. He passed the days walking the streets of Lexington, hoping by some chance to meet Miss Braxton, and it was not until late at night that he returned to the race-track, foot-sore and disappointed. He had been too deeply wounded and was too proud to make any further effort to visit the Elms, and he thought it would be unmanly and ungenerous to ask Miss Braxton to meet him away from her father's house.
In the mean time the old General's wrath increased as the days passed. He was unused to any kind of opposition, and the Colonel's persistence irritated him beyond measure. The dream of his life was a brilliant marriage for his daughter, and no amount of argument could alter his opinion that Colonel Bill was a rude, unlettered stable-man.
“Why, sir,” he would exclaim, over a mint-julep, to his friend Major Johnson, who always defended the Colonel vigorously, “the idea of such attentions to my daughter is preposterous—ludicrous! I will not permit it, sir—not for one moment. If he persists in annoying my family, sir,” and the purple hue of the General's face deepened, “I would no more hesitate to shoot him—no more, by gad!—than I would a rattlesnake.” After the fourth or fifth julep he did not always confine his conversation to his friend, and so his threats often found their way back to the object of his wrath, losing nothing by the journey. Although the Colonel's disposition was the sunniest, the strain to which he was being subjected was telling on his nerves, and once or twice he replied sharply to the tale-bearers. The little city was soon excited over the quarrel, and every movement of the principals was eagerly noted.
“My money goes on Bill,” said Jule Chinn, the proprietor of the Blue-grass Club, when the matter came up for discussion there between deals. “I saw him plug that creole down in Orleans. First he throws him down the steps of the St. Charles for insultin' a lady. When Frenchy insists on a duel an' Bill gets up in front of him, he says, in that free-an'-easy way of his, 'We mark puppies up in my country by cutting their ears, and that's what I'm going to do to you, for you ain't fit to die,' an' blame me if he don't just pop bullets through that fellow's ears like you'd punch holes in a piece of cheese!” After that the Colonel ruled a strong favorite in the betting.
When this condition of affairs had existed for two weeks, the Colonel arose one morning from a sleepless bed with a fixed idea in his mind. He sat down to a table in his room, pulled out some writing-paper, and set to work. After many sheets had been covered and destroyed, he finally decided upon the following:
“DEAR MISS BRAXTON,—I am going away from Lexington to-morrow, probably never to return. Will you be at your father's gate at three o'clock this afternoon, as I would like to say good-bye to you before I go?
“Your sincere friend,