The one now before her eyes was clad in his usual, half puritanical, half military tunic, and as usual he was fully armed, but the weapons hung quietly by his side; his arms were folded upon his breast, and his whole carriage and demeanour was subdued, sad, and melancholy. He stood leaning against the vine-clad column of the arbour, with his eyes intently fixed upon the spot where the preoccupant of the scene had disappeared. His chest heaved with emotion, which ever and anon found vent in laboured respirations of unspeakable misery.
At this moment a fierce watch-dog sprung at the intruder with savage ferocity, and to one less accustomed to danger in all its shapes, would doubtless have proved a formidable foe; but in an instant a heavy blow from his iron sheathed sabre laid the animal struggling at his feet. He stood leaning upon his weapon for an instant, and then moved slowly away until he came near the river, when he laid his hand upon the palisade running along the foot of the garden, and leapt upon the beach like a youth of twenty. In a short time Virginia saw his boat upon the water, his gigantic form rising and bending to his work with desperate and reckless efforts, the frail bark gliding over the smooth waters, "like a thing of life," until it faded away in the distance to a mere speck.
Her eye followed the receding object as it became more and more indistinct, until a mere undefined point was left upon the retina, her own voluntary powers sinking more deeply in repose from the intentness with which she pursued the single object.
How long she slept she knew not, but when she awoke the horizontal rays of the rising sun were beaming through the parted curtains, and the misty drapery from the river was rolling over the hills, and pouring through the intervening valleys in thousands of fantastic forms, weaving, here a rich festoon round the summit of one blue hill, and there spreading out a curtain of mellow tints before another.
The cool and invigorating morning breeze from the river, joined to the effects of her last refreshing and uninterrupted sleep, completely dispelled the shadowy illusions of the night, and she arose comparatively cheerful and happy. She was frightened when she cast her eyes upon the couch of the sufferer and found him awake, to think how much and how long she had neglected him. There was one indefatigable and untiring nurse watching by the bed-side, however! She had stolen in unperceived during the night, and now sat upon an humble seat at the foot of the couch; her eye as brilliant as if it was not subject to the ordinary fatigues of humanity. The invalid too had slept soundly, and awakened this morning refreshed and invigorated, and with all his inflammatory symptoms much abated.
With all these cheering influences around her, Virginia's countenance would have been soon clad in her wonted smiles, had it not been for an unbidden scene which every now and then was conjured up before her imagination, in which those near and dear to her were principal actors. But these, painful and inexplicable as they seemed to her, were far from being well defined in her own mind. For her life, she could not separate the real evidences of her drowsy senses from the vivid images of her imagination. She was firmly impressed, however, with the belief, that some parts of them were true and real transactions! She firmly believed that she had seen her mother and the Recluse during the night—not together certainly, but near the same spot and in quick succession; and she as firmly believed that she had seen the latter disable the watch-dog, mount over the palisade, and hurry away in his boat. So much was indeed true; her mother had actually visited the wounded youth during the night, and she had actually walked in the garden, and the Recluse was actually there, but no meeting took place, except in the imagination of the worn-out maiden.
She entered the breakfast room with these various impressions, real and imaginary, curiously mingled and confused, and bearing upon her own countenance an expression of embarrassment not less surprising to her mother, who was the first person she encountered. Twenty times she was on the point of asking her mother whether she had walked in the garden during the night, but as often a strange embarrassment came over her, resulting partly from what she thought she had seen, and partly from words dropped by the Recluse in her hearing—the whole confused, unarranged and undigested—the latter perhaps being entirely unrecognised by her consciousness, but still operating imperceptibly upon her conduct. She was not a little astonished, therefore, when her mother came directly to the point occupying her own thoughts at the moment, saying, as she approached her, and affectionately smoothed down the clustering ringlets upon her brow. "You slept upon your post last night, my dear daughter? Nay—no excuses—there needs none. You wanted rest, little less than he whom you watched."
"I did not sleep so soundly as you imagine, my dear mother; I saw you, methought, either sleeping or waking, and to speak truly, I scarcely know which state I was in;" and as she spoke she cast a searching glance at her mother, but her countenance was calm and unruffled as she replied, "You must have been sleeping, my dear Virginia, I stooped over you and kissed your cheek as you slept."
"And did you not walk in the garden?"
"Yes I did! is it possible you saw me and spoke not?"