Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/356

344 he could be her master (although he thought with an introspective sneer that it was a contemptible thing to excel in such a matter), for he was much the best player of the four, while the lady was only a beginner; and to give confidential advice about each stroke, to be even allowed to touch her hand and adjust the taper fingers so as to form a proper rest for the cue, this was a new form of bliss.

But the happiest hour must have an end. The second game finished. Miss Cunningham, placing her fair arms on her father's shoulders, greeted him with a kiss on either cheek, and holding out her hand graciously to each guest, retired from the room. Captain Sparrow followed her example; and then the commissioner, proposing an early ride in the morning, wished his visitor good-night, and the gentlemen repaired to their respective rooms. Then Yorke, lighting a cigar, strolled across the park to visit his guards, wandering afterwards about the lawn on his side of the house. He would fain have carried his steps to the other side, when perchance some light might indicate at a distance the shrine which guarded his mistress; but although the watchman and some of the numerous servants of the household had passed that way on their various errands, and he knew therefore that her chamber must be closed, a sense of delicacy restrained him. But at last, tired out with walking, he sought his room, stumbling over his bearer asleep in the veranda, and fell asleep himself while recalling the minutes that had been passed, the voice, the gestures, the words of his beloved.

Next morning, his late hours of the previous night notwithstanding, Yorke was up with the first grey light of dawn, although not sooner than the commissioner, who was a regular old Indian as regards early rising; but it was with a pang of disappointment that he found only one riding-horse besides Devotion was standing saddled under the portico. Selim was not there. His daughter, Mr. Cunningham said, was not going to ride that morning, but would have some tea ready for them when they returned; and accordingly, they rode through the city, which Yorke had never seen before, and where he had the opportunity of contrasting the deferential salaams accorded to the great man on his way through the streets, with the air of insolent curiosity with which any unknown subaltern performing the journey alone would be regarded.

The commissioner had various duties in the town — anew tank in course of excavation to visit, the widening of a new street in progress, the scene of a late robbery to examine, and so forth — and the sun had mounted high before they returned to the residency, when, as they entered the park, Yorke's quick eye discovered Miss Cunningham sitting by a tea-equipage under the shade of an awning spread by some trees on the western side, whither directing their horses they dismounted. Limited though was his visiting acquaintance, Yorke had often noticed that the Indian habit of a second toilet tended somewhat to impair the early appearance of such of the fair sex as took exercise in the morning. Ladies who came out at mid-day or evening in elaborate costumes, and with hair carefully dressed, would sometimes dispense with these feminine graces when attiring themselves for the early ride or drive, and would appear with careless, not to say dishevelled locks, and appearance generally suggestive of repairs needful to be effected afterwards. No such remissness could be detected in the young lady who now, after morning greetings, began to pour out the tea. Her rich brown hair, though folded in simple braids, was fit, the young man thought, to grace a coronation; the light morning-robe was crisp and fresh; in each aspect, he thought, she seemed more noble-looking, more delicate, and more refined. And see, facing him across the lawn as he sits down, is the shrine from which his goddess has issued. The wide doors in the west veranda thrown open to catch the morning air reveal some mysteries of a chamber within — the dressing-glass trimmed with dainty muslin and ribbons, the wardrobe where rest the garments which have the happy duty of enshrining their sweet mistress.

Soon the little party was joined by another horseman, Dr. Mackenzie Maxwell, the civil surgeon, who lived about half a mile from the residency, and had charge of the jail, the hospital, and the residency establishments — a benevolent-looking, middle-aged, man. Yorke had scarcely ever met him before, for Dr. Maxwell lived very much by himself, and had almost forgotten his existence as a member of the residency circle; and for a moment, on observing the warm greeting accorded to the new-comer, he was disposed to feel jealous, when he remembered having heard that Maxwell was a widower; but this feeling was soon allayed