Frazer nodded to Virginia approvingly. “I doubt it not,” he said, “for your mother is by no means heartless.”
Eleanor raised her head and gazed at him so expressionlessly that he started perceptibly; all life, all beauty, all consciousness, mental, spiritual, and physical, seemed suddenly to have left her face.
She went forward to him like one walking to death in sleep, and the only words that seemed, as it were, to drip and continually drip relentlessly on her brain, were these: “The end, the end!”
He sprang forward and covered her hand with burning kisses. “Thou’rt mine, Eleanor—mine at last.”
But suddenly he paused, startled. A low rustle, or trampling sound, as of innumerable bare feet rushing across the town, had caught his ear. And the voice of Hugh Rouse, far away, called loudly: “Quick, Manteo, this way! Thank God, we may yet save Vytal!”
On this Eleanor drew back with a cry of gladness, and Frazer hesitated. A Spanish soldier appeared at the door. “Shall we reinforce them?”
“Nay, keep your men around this cabin.” He turned to Eleanor, snapping his fingers carelessly. “Foh! a fico for the battle! You see I value your love higher even than our cause, and whether you will or not, I shall force it from you.” With this he started eagerly toward her, arms outstretched and eyes brilliant.
But Eleanor, quick as lightning, drew from her bosom a small poniard and held its point to her breast. “Another step,” she said, calmly, “and I stab myself.”
He paused, in genuine amazement. His supreme self-love had never dreamed of this—that a woman would rather kill herself than become his wife. “I no longer need to save others,” added Eleanor, triumphantly; “it is myself I save.”
For a moment he stood abashed, the very picture of chagrin; but then the light of a new impulse leaped into his eyes.