Chapter 16 - Page 2

priest: yet tell
me, what has induced these monsters to play this desperate game--to
trifle thus with my happiness?"

"You know my ignorance of the world, and how ill I am qualified to
furnish reasons for the conduct of beings so different from any I have
ever seen before. But does not love of money drive men to acts even
worse than this? I believe they thought that an aged and wealthy
father could be tempted to pay them a rich ransom for his child; and,
perhaps," she added, stealing an enquiring glance through her tears,
at the attentive Middleton, "they counted something on the fresh
affections of a bridegroom."

"They might have extracted the blood from my heart, drop by drop!"

"Yes," resumed his young and timid wife, instantly withdrawing the
stolen look she had hazarded, and hurriedly pursuing the train of the
discourse, as if glad to make him forget the liberty she had just
taken, "I have been told, there are men so base as to perjure
themselves at the altar, in order to command the gold of ignorant and
confiding girls; and if love of money will lead to such baseness, we
may surely expect it will hurry those, who devote themselves to gain,
into acts of lesser fraud."

"It must be so; and now, Inez, though I am here to guard you with my
life, and we are in possession of this rock, our difficulties, perhaps
our dangers, are not ended. You will summon all your courage to meet
the trial and prove yourself a soldier's wife, my Inez?"

"I am ready to depart this instant. The letter you sent by the
physician, had prepared me to hope for the best, and I have every
thing arranged for flight, at the shortest warning."

"Let us then leave this place and join our friends."

"Friends!" interrupted Inez, glancing her eyes around the little tent
in quest of the form of Ellen. "I, too, have a friend who must not be
forgotten, but who is pledged to pass the remainder of her life with
us. She is gone!"

Middleton gently led her from the spot, as he smilingly answered--

"She may have had, like myself, her own private communications for
some favoured ear."

The young man had not however done justice to the motives of Ellen
Wade. The sensitive and intelligent girl had readily perceived how
little her presence was necessary in the interview that has just been
related, and had retired with that intuitive delicacy of feeling which
seems to belong more properly to her sex. She was now to be seen
seated on a point of the rock, with her person so entirely enveloped
in her dress as to conceal her features. Here she had remained for
near an hour, no one approaching