“You are speaking truth. I am very ill; but I’ll soon be better—I’ll soon be better. She feared nothing from me,” added she, in a low soliloquy; “an’ could I let her outdo mo in generosity and kindness. Is this fire? Is there fire in the coach?” she asked, in a loud voice; “or is it lighthnin’? Oh, my head, my head; but it will soon be over.”
“Compose yourself, I entreat of you, my dearest girl. What! good Heavens, how is this? You have not been ill for any time? Your hand—pardon me; you need not withdraw it so hastily—is quite burning and fleshless. What is wrong?”
“Everything, sir, is wrong, unless that I am here, an’ that is as it ought to be. Ha, ha!”
“Good, my dearest girl—that consoles me again. Upon my honor, the old Prophet shall not lose by this; on the contrary, I shall keep my word like a prince, and at the Grey Stone shall he pocket, ere half an hour, the reward of his allegiance to his liege lord. I have, for a long time, had my eye on you, Miss Sullivan, an’ when the Prophet assured me that you had discarded Dalton for my sake, I could scarcely credit him, until you confirmed the delightful fact, by transmitting me a tress of your beautiful hair.”
His companion made no reply to this, and the chaise went on for some minutes without any further discourse. Henderson, at length, ventured to put over his hand towards the corner in which his companion sat; but it no sooner came in contact with her person, than he felt her shrinking, as it were, from his very touch. With his usual complacent confidence, however, in his own powers of attraction and strongly impressed, besides, with a belief in his knowledge of the sex, he at once imputed all this to caprice on the behalf of Mave, or rather to that assumption of extreme delicacy, which is often resorted to, and overacted, when the truthful and modest principle from which it should originate has ceased to exist.
“Well, my dear girl,” he proceeded, “I grant that all this is natural enough—quite so—I know the step you have taken shows great strength of character; for indeed it requires a very high degree of moral courage and virtue in you, to set society and the whole world at perfect defiance, for my sake; but, my dearest girl, don’t be cast down—you are not alone in this heroic sacrifice; not at all, believe me. You are not the first who has made it for me; neither, I trust, shall you be the last. This I say, of course, to encourage you, because I see that the step you have taken has affected you very much, as is natural it should.”
A low moan, apparently of great pain, was the only reply Henderson received to this eloquent effort at consolation. The carriage again rolled onward in silence, and nothing could be heard but the sweep of the storm without—for it blew violently—and deep breathings, or occasional moanings, from his companion within. They drove, it might be, for a quarter of an hour, in this way, when Henderson felt his companion start, and the next moment her hand was placed upon his arm.