“Dear, dear Rosa, do you mean to monopolize all the choicest gifts of Heaven? Look here,” pointing, as he spoke, to his own portrait in the volume, “and tell me if I may dare to hope that your own heart was the mirror which reflected these features?”
Rosa uttered a faint cry, and, overpowered with shame, hid her face on the arm of the sofa, while her white neck was suffused with a deep red hue that might easily have been mistaken for a blush. The Colonel was overpowered; his foible was a desire to be the first and only object of affection to a woman’s heart, and he could not doubt that he had now attained his hopes. A passionate expression of his feelings and a proffer of his heart and hand were the only evidences of gratitude which he could bestow on the gentle girl. What a fine piece of acting was Rosa’s gradual return to self-possession! The blushing timidity with which she listened to his passionate tenderness, her delicate dread lest his discovery of her secretly cherished attachment should be the motive of his present offer, and, finally, the modest yet fervent abandonment of feeling with which she allowed her head to rest on his shoulder, while his arm encircled her slender form and his lip imprinted a lover’s kiss on her fair brow, would have made the fortune of a theatrical débutante. It was all settled; the album decided the affair, and Rosa Crafts was certainly destined to become Mrs. Colonel Middleton.
But, once sure of her lover, Rosa had no desire to become a wife sooner than prudence required. She could not give up old habits without an effort, and she determined to enjoy her liberty as long as possible, by deferring the period of her marriage. Colonel Middleton busied himself in refitting his beautiful villa on the banks of the Hudson, and during his temporary absences, Rosa obtained many a moment of freedom from restraint. Fortune seemed to favor the wishes of the heartless woman of the world, for ere the time fixed for their marriage had arrived, Colonel Middleton was ordered to take command of his regiment in Florida. He was too good a soldier to hesitate, whatever might have been his disappointment, and the day which should have witnessed his union with his beautiful bride, dawned upon him amid the everglades of that wild and perilous district. Rosa felt his absence as a positive relief. Nothing was easier than to write tender and beautiful letters to her distant lover—nothing more pleasant than to return to society as an affianced bride, certain of a future establishment, and privileged to seek present enjoyment.
“How can you be so attentive to that consummate flirt?” asked a friend, as Captain Sabretash returned from leading Miss Crafts to her carriage after a gay party.
“I have good reason for my conduct, Harry,” was the reply; “she has not a more devoted attendant in society than myself.”
“I know it, and therefore it is that I am surprised at your inconsistency.”
“Inconsistency, Harry! You don’t know me, or you would not think me inconsistent. Can nothing but admiration and love render one watchful? I tell you that never had that woman a lover half so devoted and so observant as myself; but it is with the keen eye of hatred that I watch her every movement; it is the spirit of vengeance which actuates my every attention.”
“It is a queer way of showing hatred. Do you mean to continue such devotion after her marriage with Colonel Middleton?”
“That marriage will never take place, Harry. Think you the noble-minded Colonel would wed her if he knew all that I could tell him? I will not oppose idle words to a lover’s passion, but I will bring him proof such as he cannot doubt of her unworthiness, and thus will I fulfil my revenge.”
Among the admirers whom Rosa drew around her during the Colonel’s absence, was one who excited her peculiar interest. The Baron de Stutenhoff was a Russian, with clear blue eyes, a profusion of long light hair, and also presumed to be in possession of a mouth, although his bushy fox-colored mustachios and untrimmed beard rendered the fact somewhat difficult of proof to those who had never seen the gentleman expand his jaws at a supper-table. He was no impostor—no Spanish barber, no French cook, no Italian mountebank disguised en marquis. The Baron de Stutenhoff was actually a Baron, privileged to wear the crosses and ribbons of several orders at his buttonhole, and bearing on his cheek a broad and not very seemly scar of a sabre-cut received in honorable combat. He had been captivated with the charms of the beautiful coquette, and she was by no means displeased with the opportunity of flirting with so distinguished a man. He became her constant attendant in society; his habits and tastes assimilated to her own far better than did those of the sensitive and gifted Colonel Middleton, and when he talked, in bad French, of his fine estates, of the rich pomp of Russian life, of the droskas, with their silver bells and lining of costly furs, Rosa could not help wishing that she had not been quite so precipitate in her acceptance of the Colonel’s proposal. Nothing would have suited her vain humor so well as becoming the wonder of some foreign capital—la belle Americaine of some distant land, where Americans were looked upon as savages. She fancied she could behold her resplendent beauty clad in the picturesque attire of a foreign clime, and winning the admiration of kings and princes in the semi-barbaric court of Russia. Her vanity led her into the same labyrinth where she had so often bewildered others, and, without confiding her feelings to her more prudent mother, she determined to mould circumstances to suit her new views of ambition. The Baron de Stutenhoff was a vain man, and of course easily led away by flattery. His title was derived from his long service in the Russian army, since, by a custom of that country, every freeman who has been in active military service during a certain term of years, receives the title of Baron by courtesy, whatever be his birth. His villages, of which he boasted so largely, consisted of a few miserable huts, occupied by some twenty or thirty serfs, which had been his patrimony, but which had long since gone out of his possession to pay gambling debts. He was a weak and ignorant man, passionately addicted to play, and, since he had been among the untitled Americans, he had learned to look upon himself as so great a man, that he doubted whether he should honor Miss Crafts with the offer of his hand, or wait for some more distinguished woman to throw herself at his feet. But Rosa was an overmatch for him in acuteness. She managed to give him an idea that she was very wealthy, and then, after bringing him as near to an absolute proposal as suited her views, she determined to take her own time to make a decision. But she was doomed to have her plans developed rather prematurely.