University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER THE FOURTH
THE BETROTHED.

She gazed upon that gorgeous sunset, the beautiful
girl! She gazed from the arching window of her
chamber, at the setting sun, with her beaming face
flushed into brighter radiance with the last glimpse
of daylight—her soft blue eyes dimmed with bursting
tears—her pouting lips of most delicious voluptuousness
of shape, parted by the rising sigh—and
her golden hued hair, floating in glossy richness
down each budding cheek, and along her arching
neck, and finally resting in beautiful disorder upon
that virgin bosom, with its veins of azure and its
outline of youth and bloom.

The beauty of Marian Waltham was of that fascinating
character which so finely and delicately
blends the spiritual with the material, and charms
the beholder with a glance, a look, or a tone;—
which enchains the fancy with every motion and
attracts the imagination in every attitude, throwing
the golden light of romance around the fair form—
giving a brighter glance to the eye, a lovelier hue
to the velvet cheek, and a winning sweetness to the
tone, which seems to convey every idea of the hidden

soul that words of human speech may fail to
utter.

Lovely as Marian was at all times, she certainly
never seemed more beautiful than on this eventful
evening, when gazing at the last beams of sunset,
from the spacious window of her chamber, situated
in the western wing of Major Tracy's mansion,
among the heights of the Wissahikon.

Her face, raised gently upward, received on each
glowing cheek, the soft flush of sunset; her eyes,
her large blue, lustrous orbs, half closed in dreaming
thought, were impearled in a starting tear; her
mouth, with its small lips curving with a fascinating
fulness, was slightly opened with the listlessness
of reverie: her full rounded chin, sank with
all the richness of flowing outline into the arching
neck with its clear transparent hue, and around the
Grecian head, along each budding cheek, and over
her neck and shoulder streamed the luxuriant locks
of her waving hair, whose bright and silky gold,
glistening in the sunbeams, completed the fascination
that hovered round her beauty like a veil of
light.

Her bust was ample, well proportioned, and
swelling in its outline, yet delicately formed and
full of virgin beauty; her waist small and tapering,
yet without any appearance of unnatural confinement
or artificial restraint; while from her waist
downward the proportions of her fignre fell in a

voluptuous sweep, which gave indefinable fascination
to every motion of those small and softly chiselled
feet, whose fairy tracery of form peeped
from beneath the snow-white folds of the bridal
robe.

And those arms, full, fair, and rounded with the
floating line of grace, bared from the shoulder with
their beauty gleaming through the bewitching
sleeves of air-like lace, and the delicate hands with
miniature fingers half clasped in front supporting
the golden bracelet, which the maiden was about to
entwine around that wrist which needed no such
garish ornament; all these charms—the face, the
floating hair, the half thoughtful, half dreaming attitude,
the air of winning innocence, the innocence
that implies ignorance of the world's customs, which
encircled the maiden's features—all combined, made
her seem to the fascinated eye, pure as she was, a
being to be loved with all the depth of the passion
that springs from a high intellect, a being whose
entire soul, with all its gentle and modest affections
would dissolve in deep and lasting love, for the object
of her choice.

Marian turned from the bright sunset and gazed
around her chamber. Ever since the intimate
friendship of Major Tracy and Squire Waltham had
given rise to frequent visits to the mansion of the
former, this chamber had been set apart for Marian
and furnished to her taste. The furniture was attractive

without being gorgeous. The chamber
looked precisely the same as on the day when the
fair Marian first retired within its precincts to muse
on the gallant youth, who had saved her life, endangered
by a wild and untamed horse, who rushed
with herself and father over a precipice, and plunged
them into the waters of the Wissahikon. She
even now imagined the noble form of Herbert, confronting
the maddened horse, and when his efforts
to stay the speed of the animal were in vain, again
the picture was colored by her fancy, how gallantly
he sprang into the depths of the rivulet and
drew her fainting form and that of her dying father
to the shore. All this, and the subsequent scenes
of the confession of his love, her acknowledgment
of a mutual passion, and the betrothal, arose to her
vivid fancy, and the maiden dashed her father's
marriage present, the gaudy bracelet, to the floor,
and covering her face with her fair white hands,
she sought relief from the pressure of thought in a
flood of tears.

Her attention was attracted by the sound of a
footstep, and a low voice whispered her name.
She looked up and beheld her father. His frame
was thin and attenuated with disease, his shoulders
bent forward with premature extreme old age, and
the slight masses of grey hair, which fell from under
his invalid's cap, strayed along each sunken
cheek, affording a fearful relief to the pale hue of

that face, with the features, distorted by pain, the
glassy eye, the shrunken lip and contracted brow.

“Daughter, you are in tears,” said Mr. Waltham,
laying a thin and withered hand upon Marian's
shoulder. “It were better not to weep thus bitterly.
What must be, must. I have planned this
marriage, Marian, with an eye single to thy happiness—”
he paused, for a violent fit of coughing
choked his utterance. “When I am no more,
Marian, you will need a protector. Lieutenant
Wellwood Tracy—”

Marian turned her head away, and concealed her
face in her hands, at the name. “Nay, Marian,
wherefore start you thus? Is not the Lieutenant
nobly born, and gallantly bred? Has he not wealth;
is not his name enrolled among the honored and respected
of the world?”

“Father! My troth is plighted to another?”
exclaimed Marian in that decided voice which
betokens the firmness of despair—“My troth is
plighted to another!”

“An outcast and a beggar!” exclaimed a strange
voice, and the tall form of Major Tracy stood between
the father and daughter—“An outcast and a
beggar!” he continued, as a smile of mingled contempt
and scorn curved his lips. “Thy troth is
pledged to another forsooth? Why, Marian, I had
thought better of thee than this? What! would
you stoop to marry an outcast from his home, a

rebel from his king, a man who has drawn his
sword in most foul disloyalty, and by the unsheathing
of that sword, blasphemed his God? Would
you marry a beggar, fair maiden?”

As he said this Major Tracy's brow became contracted
with a dark frown, and then his lip trembled
momently with an expression of contempt.
His appearance was full of majesty, with his tall
form and erect bearing; and his high pallid brow,
seared by the wrinkles of worldly care and ambitious
thought, was shown in bold relief, as the last
glow of sunset fell on its bold outline, with the dark
hair, sprinkled with the frost of age, thrown back
in careless disorder.

But the fair maiden quailed not before his glance.
Stung by his taunts into a reply, she raised her fair
form to its full stature, and with her blue eye,
flashing with a steady, unvarying glance, and with
her fair arm outstretched, she exclaimed in a quiet
tone—

“Can a father speak thus of his son?” she exclaimed,
“can a father so far forget all feelings of
natural affection, as to curse, with bitter words and
sneering manner, the child, whom he is bound, by
every law of God and man, to love and protect?
Not thus does a maiden speak of her betrothed husband!
No! Though Herbert were a beggar, clad
in rags and banned by the unjust opinion of the
world, though he labored under the bitterest curse

that ever rose to the lips of an unjust, a passionate
parent, still would I wed him, banned and cursed,
though he were, aye, cheerfully and joyfully would
I wed him, and as Truth lives in heaven, I will
wed none—”

“Hold, Marian, hold, for my sake!” shrieked her
father, raising his attenuated hands, with a voice
that seemed prophetic of his anticipated home—the
grave—“Marian, pause for your father's sake!”

The words died on the maiden's lip, the flush of
momentary excitement passed from her beaming
features, her eye lost its flashing glance, her form
its erect stature, her arm fell listlessly by her side,
and Marian forgot the vow of eternal constancy to
her lover, when she beheld, standing before her,
the weak and attenuated form of her father, trembling
on the verge of the grave, with his eyes,
dimmed by disease, warmed into the momentary
glance that appealed with such silent eloquence to
the holiest feelings of a daughter's heart.

She sank weeping at his feet, and clasped his
withered hands, as she wept.

“You will consent, my daughter?” he whispered,
“You will gratify your poor, fond father.”

Marian murmured assent, and Major Tracy stood
regarding the father and daughter with a glance of
bitter mocking triumph as he muttered, “Now this
brave son of mine shall know the man he has defied!
Wellwood shall have the bride and the lands,

and when the rebel has met his deserts, Wellwood
succeeds to the Earldom! Miss Waltham,” he
continued aloud, “I had well nigh forgot the object
of my errand hither. Lieutenant Wellwood Tracy
has just arrived, and with as little delay as may be,
after the fatigue of travel, will hasten to pay his respects
to his fair bride!”