A Fair Barbarian | Page 5

light as she
moved them.
"American girls always have more things than English girls," she
observed, with admirable coolness. "They dress more. I have been told
so by girls who have been in Europe. And I have more things than most
American girls. Father had more money than most people; that was one
reason; and he spoiled me, I suppose. He had no one else to give things
to, and he said I should have every thing I took a fancy to. He often
laughed at me for buying things, but he never said I shouldn't buy
them."
"He was always generous," sighed Miss Belinda. "Poor, dear Martin!"
Octavia scarcely entered into the spirit of this mournful sympathy. She
was fond of her father, but her recollections of him were not pathetic or
sentimental.
"He took me with him wherever he went," she proceeded. "And we had
a teacher from the States, who travelled with us sometimes. He never
sent me away from him. I wouldn't have gone if he had wanted to send
me--and he didn't want to," she added, with a satisfied little laugh.


CHAPTER III.

L'ARGENTVILLE.
Miss Belinda sat, looking at her niece, with a sense of being at once
stunned and fascinated. To see a creature so young, so pretty, so
luxuriously splendid, and at the same time so simply and completely at
ease with herself and her surroundings, was a revelation quite beyond
her comprehension. The best-bred and nicest girls Slowbridge could
produce were apt to look a trifle conscious and timid when they found
themselves attired in the white muslin and floral decorations; but this
slender creature sat in her gorgeous attire, her train flowing over the
modest carpet, her rings flashing, her ear-pendants twinkling,
apparently entirely oblivious of, or indifferent to, the fact that all her
belongings were sufficiently out of place to be startling beyond
measure.
Her chief characteristic, however, seemed to be her excessive frankness.
She did not hesitate at all to make the most remarkable statements
concerning her own and her father's past career. She made them, too, as
if there was nothing unusual about them. Twice, in her childhood, a
luckless speculation had left her father penniless; and once he had taken
her to a Californian gold-diggers' camp, where she had been the only
female member of the somewhat reckless community.
"But they were pretty good-natured, and made a pet of me," she said;
"and we did not stay very long. Father had a stroke of luck, and we
went away. I was sorry when we had to go, and so were the men. They
made me a present of a set of jewelry made out of the gold they had got
themselves. There is a breastpin like a breastplate, and a necklace like a
dog-collar: the bracelets tire my arms, and the ear-rings pull my ears;
but I wear them sometimes--gold girdle and all."
"Did I," inquired Miss Belinda timidly, "did I understand you to say,
my dear, that your father's business was in some way connected with
silver-mining?"
"It is silver-mining," was the response. "He owns some mines, you
know"--

"Owns?" said Miss Belinda, much fluttered; "owns some silver-mines?
He must be a very rich man,--a very rich man. I declare, it quite takes
my breath away."
"Oh! he is rich," said Octavia; "awfully rich sometimes. And then again
he isn't. Shares go up, you know; and then they go down, and you don't
seem to have any thing. But father generally comes out right, because
he is lucky, and knows how to manage."
"But--but how uncertain!" gasped Miss Belinda: "I should be perfectly
miserable. Poor, dear Mar"--
"Oh, no, you wouldn't!" said Octavia: "you'd get used to it, and
wouldn't mind much, particularly if you were lucky as father is. There
is every thing in being lucky, and knowing how to manage. When we
first went to Bloody Gulch"--
"My dear!" cried Miss Belinda, aghast. "I--I beg of you"--
Octavia stopped short: she gazed at Miss Belinda in bewilderment, as
she had done several times before.
"Is any thing the matter?" she inquired placidly.
"My dear love," explained Miss Belinda innocently, determined at least
to do her duty, "it is not customary in--in Slowbridge,--in fact, I think I
may say in England,--to use such--such exceedingly--I don't want to
wound your feelings, my dear,--but such exceedingly strong
expressions! I refer, my dear, to the one which began with a B. It is
really considered profane, as well as dreadful beyond measure."
"'The one which began with a B,'" repeated Octavia, still staring at her.
"That is the name of a place; but I didn't name it, you know. It was
called that, in the first place, because a party of men were surprised and
murdered there, while