Mr. Raleigh
went in search of Capua, and ere long reappeared.
It grew quite dark; the candles were lighted. Rite slipped in, and,
after having flown about like a thistle-down for a while, mounted a
chair and put her arms about her mother's shoulders. Then Mr. Raleigh,
sitting silently on a sofa, attracted her, and shortly afterward she had
curled herself beside him and fallen asleep with her head upon his
knee; otherwise he did not touch her. Mrs. Laudersdale stood by an open
casement; the servant who had carried her note came up the lawn and
spoke to her from without. There was no one in the house, and he had
left it on the library-table. The pressure of those tender little arms
was yet warm about the mother's neck; she glanced sidelong at the
sleeping child. "He shall never see that note!" she murmured, and
slipped through the casement.
Accustomed to all rash and intrepid adventure during this summer, it
was nothing for her to unmoor a boat, enter it, and lift the oars, not
pausing to observe that it was the Arrow. Just then, however, a little
wind ruffled down and shook the sail, a wind not quite favorable, but in
which she could tack across and back; she drew in the oars, put to the
proof all her new boat-craft, and recklessly dashed through the dark
element that curled and seethed about her. She had to make but two tacks
in that hour's impetuous progress, before the house rose, as it had
frequently done before, glooming at but a few rods' distance, and
loading with odorous breath the air that tossed its vines ere stealing
across the lake.
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