“Poor girl! she will die with terror, I fear. What fine features, and what beautiful hair!” said Louisa, as she swept back the long tresses from her neck and brow, purer than alabaster.
In a few moments the object of their solicitude opened her eyes. She could not speak, but pressing the hand of Louisa to her lips, pointed toward a mansion just discernible through a dense shrubbery at some distance.
“Shall I bear you home?” inquired Evertson.
The stranger looked her thanks; and lifting her in his arms as tenderly as if she were a babe, he proceeded with his almost lifeless burthen in the direction pointed out.
Thus met, for the first time, the discarded Agatha and the innocent usurper of her rights.
The fancy of Walter Evertson seized at once upon a scene so interesting as the one he had just witnessed. No sooner did he part with Louisa at the door of the saloon, than, hastening to his studio, he began sketching the outlines of his truthful conceptions. Rapidly did he hasten on his own misery—blissfully unconscious the while of the sad termination of his labors. Never had he wrought so well and so rapidly—not a stroke but told. There was the beautiful meadow, with its brave old trees, and the river gleaming through their branches; the fine stag, his antlered front bent toward the two females; the graceful form of Louisa standing beneath the old oak, shielding the terrified stranger, one arm thrown around her, the other slightly raised as if motioning the animal away. Love surely guided his hand; for, without a sitting, the artist had transferred from his heart to the canvas the gentle features of Louisa with an accuracy undisputable. Strikingly, too, had he delineated the form and face of the deformed—her long, waving tresses—her pale countenance—her large eyes fixed in terror upon the stag, and her small, mis-shapen figure. Something, too, had he caught, even in that short interview, of the features of Agatha. He could not, however, proceed in his task until it had received the approbation of the master and mistress of the mansion. He had purposely requested Louisa to be silent respecting the morning’s adventure, that he might, by surprise, obtain the mastery over the whims of Mrs. Oakly, so hard to be gratified. They were now respectfully invited to the picture-room, together with Louisa, to pass judgment upon his (to him) beautiful sketch.
To depict the scene which followed the withdrawal of the curtain he had placed before it would be impossible. Mrs. Oakly gave one look, and with a dreadful shriek, exclaiming, “My child!” fell senseless to the floor. Mr. Oakly, foaming with rage, his face livid and distorted, rushed upon the astonished artist, and in a voice choked with passion, cried,
“Out of my house, villain! Ha! do you beard me thus! Who are you, that have thus stolen my secret, and dare to show me that picture—dare to place that hateful image before me? Out of my house, I say, ere I am tempted to commit a worse crime!”
Astonished, bewildered, confounded, Evertson for a moment could not speak, nor would the enraged man hear him when he did. In vain Louisa, while striving to restore animation to her mother, interceded, explained, expostulated—alas! her tears and agitation only betraying to her father a new source of anger. Seizing her by the arm, and bidding her seek her chamber, he thrust her from the room, and then turning once more to the artist, as he raised the still inanimate form of his wife,
“I give you half an hour to make your arrangements for leaving my roof—beware how you exceed that time; when you are ready, you will find the sum due you in this cursed room—begone, sir!”