I would recommend you,
however,"--and he spoke in mockery,--"when next you drive
a weapon into the chest of an unresisting enemy, to be
more certain of your aim. Had that been as true as the
blow from the butt of your rifle, I should not have lived
to triumph in this hour. I little deemed," he pursued,
still addressing the nearly heart-broken officer in the
same insolent strain, "that my intrigue with that dark-eyed
daughter of the old Canadian would have been the means
of throwing your companion so speedily into my power,
after his first narrow escape. Your disguise was well
managed, I confess; and but that there is an instinct
about me, enabling me to discover a De Haldimar, as a
hound does the deer, by scent, you might have succeeded
in passing for what you. appeared. But" (and his tone
suddenly changed its irony for fierceness) "to the point,
sir. That you are the lover of this girl I clearly
perceive, and death were preferable to a life embittered
by the recollection that she whom we love reposes in the
arms of another. No such kindness is meant you, however.
To-morrow you shall return to the fort; and, when there,
you may tell your colonel, that, in exchange for a certain
miniature and letters, which, in the hurry of departure,
I dropped in his apartment, some ten days since, Sir
Reginald Morton, the outlaw, has taken his daughter Clara
to wife, but without the solemnisation of those tedious
forms that bound himself in accursed union with her
mother.
Pages:
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759
760
761
762
763
764
765