Inez | Page 6

withdrew. "Mr. J.A. Hamilton." Florence passed out, Mary
remained behind.
"Come, why do you linger?"
"I thought, Florry, you might wish to see him alone; perhaps he would
prefer it."
"Mary, you have identified yourself with us. To my father we must be
as one." She extended her hand, and the next moment they stood in the
reception-room.

The father and uncle were standing with folded arms, looking down
into the muddy street below. He advanced to meet them, holding out a
hand to each. Florence pressed her lips to the one she held, and
exclaimed,
"My dear father, how glad I am to see you!"
"Glad to see me! You did not receive my letters then?"
"Yes, I did, but are their contents and pleasure at meeting you
incompatible?"
He made no reply, and then Mary said, in a low, tremulous tone,
"Uncle, you have done me a great injury, and you must make me all the
reparation in your power. You said, in your letter to Florry, that you did
not think I would wish to go with you. Oh, uncle! you do not, cannot
believe me so ungrateful, so devoid of love as to wish, under any
circumstances, to be separated from you. Now ease my heart, and say I
may share your new home. I should be very miserable away from you."
An expression of pleasure passed over his face, but again the brow
darkened.
"Mary! Florence is my child--my destiny hers, my misfortunes hers;
but I have no right to drag you with me in my fall; to deprive you of the
many advantages that will be afforded, by your uncle's wealth, of the
social position you may one day attain."
"Uncle! uncle! am I not your child by adoption? Have you not loved
and cared for me during long years? Oh! what do I care for wealth--for
what you call a high position in the world? You and Florry are my
world." She threw her arms about his neck, and sobbed, "Take me! oh,
take me with you!"
"If you so earnestly desire it, you shall indeed go with us, my Mary."
And, for the first time in her life, he imprinted a kiss on her brow.

When he departed, it was with a promise to call for them the next
morning, that they might make, with their aunt, some necessary
purchases, and remove to a hotel near the river.
Everything was packed the ensuing day, when Mary suddenly
remembered that her books were still in the recitation-room, and would
have gone for them, but Florence said,
"I will bring up the books, Mary; you are tired and pale with bending so
long over that trunk." And accordingly she went.
Mary threw herself on the couch to rest a moment, and fell into a
reverie of some length, unheeding the flying minutes, when she
recollected that Florence had been absent a long time, and rising, was
about to seek her; just then her cousin entered. A change had come over
her countenance--peace, quiet, happiness reigned supreme. One hour
later, and they had gone from Madame ----'s, never to return again.
CHAPTER IV
"Time the supreme! Time is eternity, Pregnant with all eternity can give;
With all that makes archangels smile Who murders time, he crushes in
the birth A power ethereal."
YOUNG.
A year had passed away. "How paradoxical is the signification of the
term!" How vast, when we consider that each hour hastens the end of
our pilgrimage! How insignificant in comparison with futurity! A
single drop in the boundless deep of eternity! Oh Time! thou greatest of
all anomalies! Friend yet foe, "preserver and yet destroyer!" Whence
art thou, great immemorial? When shall thy wondrous mechanism be
dissolved? When shall the "pall of obscurity" descend on thy Herculean
net-work? Voices of the past echo through thy deserted temples, and
shriek along thy bulwarks--Never, no never!
Season had followed season in rapid succession, and the last rays of an
August sun illumined a scene so beautiful, that I long for the pencil of a

Claude Lorraine. It was a far-off town, in a far-off state, yet who has
gazed on thy loveliness, oh, San Antonio, can e'er forget thee! Thine
was the sweetness of nature; no munificent hand had arranged, with
artistic skill, a statue here, a fountain there.
The river wound like an azure girdle round the town; not confined by
precipitous banks, but gliding along the surface, as it were, and
reflecting, in its deep blue waters, the rustling tule which fringed the
margin. An occasional pecan or live-oak flung a majestic shadow
athwart its azure bosom, and now and then a clump of willows sighed
low in the evening breeze.
Far away to the north stretched a mountain range, blue in the distance;