Emily rose on the morning of the duel in blissful ignorance of the danger which Henry had incurred on her account. She had passed a sleepless night, in the most intense agony. Her eyes were red and swollen with weeping, and her heart yet beat with the violence of her emotions. She felt in the most intense degree the misery of her situation, to which she failed not to give all its weight. She had a friend—a brother—more than brother—near, in the person of Henry. That love which she allowed her fond heart to cherish was like an oasis in the desert of her misery. She loved him, and in this thought—in the delightful sensation which accompanied it—she found her only solace.
At breakfast she saw him again; again his speaking eyes told how fondly his heart clung to her; again his smile fanned her fevered brain, like the zephyr of summer, into a dream of bliss. Her heart led her back to the days when they had wandered together over her father's plantation. Then, restrained by the coyness of unrevealed love, each enjoyed a happiness to which the other was supposed to be a stranger.
But the anguish of her painful position would come to destroy the dream of bliss, and dissipate the bright halo her imagination had cast before her. She retired to her state-room, to ponder again her unhappy lot. "Thy will be done," murmured she, as, throwing herself into a chair, she resigned herself to the terrible reflection that she was a slave and an outcast. The bright dream of love was only a chimera, to make her feel more deeply the terrible reality.
Whilst she was thus venting her anguish, she was roused from her lethargy of grief by the chambermaid, who had entered by the inner door.
"Please, ma'am, a gentleman out in the cabin says he wants to speak to you."
"A gentleman wishes to speak to me? Did he send his name?"
"No, ma'am. He said you wouldn't know him, if he did; so it was no use to send it."
"Pray, what looking gentleman is he?"—her mind reverting to Maxwell.
"Well, ma'am, he's a very respectable looking gentleman," answered the girl, to whom Uncle Nathan (for he was the person alluded to) had given half a dollar. "I think he is a Yankee, by his talk."
"Pray, ask him to send his name."