Huberts Wife | Page 4

Kennons happy and fair. Some cousins came down from the city seeking safety--bringing, alas, suffering and death!
In one little month, how fearful a change!
Duncan Lisle, sitting before the fire on this sad rainy evening, after the lapse of twenty years, shudders as he recalls the blackened pall that seemed spread over earth and air.
Strange to say, the disease prevailed least amongst the frightened servants.
The hundred were perhaps decimated.
In the house only Duncan and his half-sister Della survived; they in fact escaped the contagion. The father, a strong, healthy man, struggled bravely with the fierce attack; he even rallied, until there was good hope of his recovery. But a sudden relapse bore him swiftly beyond mortal remedy. Duncan, in his reverie, closes his eyes, to shut out the fearful memory. He glides over his college years and his sister's course at school. He sees Jerusha Thornton in her youth and pride and beauty. She waves off the many suitors in her train, only to smile winsomely at the young master of Kennons. Her estate is equal to, and adjoins his own. He has known her from her childhood--he loves no other--and still he loves not her. He revolves the reason of this in his own mind. She has beauty, wealth, accomplishments. He gives no credence to rumors of her cruelty to servants, though aware of her haughtiness to all, and her disdain to inferiors. The high favor which she showed to him would be welcomed with joy by at least a half-dozen of his acquaintance. But this, her manifest preference, did not please Duncan Lisle--there might be no accounting for it, but it was a fact.
What was to be done? Kennons needed sadly a woman at its head. Its master had come to be nearly twenty-eight, and not married yet!
The servants were in a state of terrified suspense, lest he should bring Miss Rusha as their mistress. They wished their master to marry--they would dance for joy--but it must be some other young lady than the heiress of Thornton Hall.
Delia had been to a Northern school nearly five years; she would soon be eighteen, and was about to graduate.
As very young girls, Della and Rusha had known each other. For many years, however, having been at different schools they had rarely met.
Duncan held a faint impression that his half-sister had never been at all partial to this near neighbor of his. She was coming home so soon, he had such confidence in her judgment and womanly intuitions, he would await her coming, and see if she could divine why it was that while he would be attracted to Rusha Thornton he could not.
Besides, Della was not returning home alone. Ellice Linwood had been for five years her most intimate chosen friend, and room-mate. Ellice was the only child of a widowed Presbyterian clergyman. Her father had spent all he had to bestow upon her, in her education. This being thorough and complete, in the way such terms are used, she was henceforth to support herself by teaching.
In order to avoid a deplorable separation, these two young friends had put their wits together, and lo, the result! Through Della's good brother Duncan, a situation had been secured for Ellice in the family of Col. Anderson, not over six miles from Kennons. They would speedily become excellent equestrians, these friends, and annihilate the narrow space every day in the year.
CHAPTER III.
AN INTERRUPTION TO DUNCAN'S REVERIE.
Duncan Lisle, still gazing vacantly into the varying flames, performed anew the journey, not from Kennons to Troy on the Hudson, but from the latter city, via New York, back to his Virginian plantation. His sister and Ellice Linwood were his companions, for it had been arranged that, though Ellice's session of school was not to commence for a couple of months, yet she should thus early undertake the journey for sake of the company; and Della's home was to be hers also in the intervening time.
Della and Ellice! They flitted hither and thither before Duncan's mental vision, as they had on that memorable journey. Just free from the irksome restraints of the school-room, full of joyous anticipations, they gave way to that girlish gayety, and that unbounded enthusiasm, which a thorough sense of happiness and enjoyment cannot fail to inspire. Life was before them beautiful, glorious, and without end! This was only nine years ago--and now!
As we look through Duncan's eyes, we see that Della was the taller and more graceful of the two. Her hair and complexion were rather dark than fair; long, dark eyelashes shaded eyes deep blue, dreamy and wondrous in expression. We never mind much a nose, unless it be ugly to a deformity, or a model for the sculptor. An Angelo would have thrilled at sight of Della's nose, and straightway wrought it