Swan's eyes followed her. With his feet, he dared not. His bounding
heart half-choked him with pleasant pain. All be had not said,--all he
had meant to say to Dorcas, of his well-laid plans, his good-luck,
his hopes,--all he had meant to entreat of her constancy, for in the
infrequent communications between the two countries there was no hope
of a correspondence,--all he had meant to say to her of his fervent
love, of his anguish at separation, of the joy of reunion, and that
his love would leave him only with his life,--if he could only have
told her! But then he never would or could have put it all into
words, if Dorcas had stayed with him under the pear-tree till the next
morning.
He thought of the Colonel's pride, and how it would come down, at the
sight of Swan Day returning to Walton with five thousand dollars in
his coat-pocket, and mounted, perhaps, on an elephant! If he had held
a foremost social position in Walton, even while selling tape and
mop-sticks, molasses and rum, at the country-store, what might not be
the impression on the public mind at seeing the glittering plumage of
this "bird let loose from Eastern skies, when hastening fondly home"?
There was much balm for wounded pride to be gathered in this Oriental
project.
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