here, and bear her away--a prisoner, a hostage--he knew not why--on a
galloping horse in the dust of the prairie--far beyond the seas! It was
only when he saw her cheek flush and pale, when he saw her staring at
him with helpless, frightened, but fascinated eyes,--the eyes of the
fluttering bird under the spell of the rattlesnake,--that he drew his
breath and turned bewildered away. "And do you know, dear," she said
with naive simplicity to her sister that evening, "that although he was
an American, and everybody says that they don't care at all for those
poor Indians, he was so magnanimous in his indignation that I fancied
he looked like one of Cooper's heroes himself rather than an Atherly. It
was such a stupid thing for me to show him that tomb of Major Atherly,
you know, who fought the Americans,--didn't he?--or was it later?--but I
quite forgot he was an American." And with this belief in her mind, and
in the high expiation of a noble nature, she forbore her characteristic
raillery, and followed him meekly, manacled in spirit like the
allegorical figure, to the church porch, where they separated, to meet
on the morrow. But that morrow never came.

For late in the afternoon a cable message reached him from California
asking him to return to accept a nomination to Congress from his own
district. It determined his resolution, which for a moment at the church
porch had wavered under the bright eyes of Lady Elfrida. He telegraphed
his acceptance, hurriedly took leave of his honestly lamenting kinsman,
followed his dispatch to London, and in a few days was on the Atlantic.

How he was received in California, how he found his sister married to
the blond lawyer, how he recovered his popularity and won his election,
are details that do not belong to this chronicle of his quest. And that
quest seems to have terminated forever with his appearance at Washington
to take his seat as Congressman.