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Page 66
"How can you speak so, Margaret? No, my presentiment is
of a different character. But it is very foolish and
silly to allow the feeling to weigh with me. I will try
to think more rationally. Say nothing of this, however,
and least of all to Ronayne."
"Not a word, dearest. Good bye for the present. I must
look after the dinner. You know who dines with us."
A look expressive of the deep sense she entertained of
the consideration of her friend, was the only commentary
of Miss Heywood, as she passed into her mother's apartment.
CHAPTER XI.
It was now the middle of May. A month had elapsed since
the events detailed in the preceding chapters. The
recollection of the outrage at Heywood's farm, committed
early in April was fast dying away, save in the bosoms
of those more immediately interested in the fate of its
proprietor, and apprehensions of a repetition of similar
atrocities had, in a great measure, ceased. A better
understanding between the commanding officer and his
subordinates--the result of a long private interview,
which Ensign Ronayne had had with the former, on the
morning after his promise to Mrs. Headley, followed by
an apology on parade that day, had arisen. Corporal Nixon
was now Sergeant Nixon--Collins had succeeded to him,
and Le Noir and the boy--Catholic and Protestant--had
been buried in one grave. Ephraim Giles filled the office
of factotum to Von Vottenberg, whose love of whisky
punch, was, if possible, on the increase. Winnebeg, the
bearer of confidential despatches, announcing the hostile
disposition and acts of certain of the Winnebagoes, had
not returned, and Waunangee, who, recovered from the
fumes of the claret, had, in an earnest manner, expressed
to Ronayne contrition for the liberty he had taken with
Miss Heywood, had departed from the neighborhood, no one
knew whither. Harmony, in a word, had been some days
restored in the Fort, and the only thing that detracted
from the general contentment, was the uncertainty
attending the fate of Mr. Heywood--regretted less,
however, for his own sake, than for that of his amiable
daughter, who vainly sought to conceal from her friends,
the anxiety induced by an absence, the duration of which
it was utterly impossible to divine. As for Mrs. Heywood,
she was still in ignorance, so well had things been
managed by the Elmsleys, that any of the fearful scenes
had occurred. She still believed her husband to be at
the farm.
But, as it was not likely she could much longer remain
in ignorance of what had been the subject of conversation
with every one around her, it was advised by Von Vottenberg,
that, as the warmth of spring was now fully developed,
and all dread of the Indians resuming their hostile visit,
at an end, she should be conveyed back to the cottage,
the pure air around which, was much more likely to improve
her health, than the confined atmosphere of the Fort.
She had accordingly been removed thither early in May,
accompanied by her daughter and Catherine.
Ronayne, of course, become once more a daily visitor,
and soon beneath his hand, the garden began again to
assume the beautiful garb it had worn at that season,
for the last two years. The interviews of the lovers
here, freed from the restraints imposed upon them while
in the Fort, had resumed that fervent character which
had marked them on the afternoon of the day when they so
solemnly interchanged their vows of undying faith. They
now no longer merely looked their love. They spoke of
it--drank in the sweet avowal from each others lips, and
luxuriated in the sweet pleasure it imparted. They were
as the whole world to each other, and although language
could not convey a warmer expression of their feelings,
than had already gone forth from their lips, still was
the repetition replete with a sweetness that never palled
upon the ear. Like the man who never tires of gazing upon
his gold, so did they never tire of the treasures of the
expressed love, that daily grew more intense in their
hearts. And yet, notwithstanding this utter devotedness
of soul--notwithstanding her flattering heart confessed
in secret the fullest realization of those dreams which
had filled and sustained her in early girlhood--albeit
the assurance the felt that, in Ronayne, she had found
the impersonation of the imaginings of her maturer life,
still whenever he urged her in glowing language to name
the day when she would become his wife, she evaded an
answer, not from caprice, but because she would not bring
to him a heart clouded by the slightest tinge of that
anxiety with which ignorance of her father's fate, could
not fail to shade it. A painful circumstance which happened
about that period, at length, however, brought affairs
to a crisis.
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