e retired to rest he felt no inclination
to sleep. Rosabella floated before him as he had first seen her, a
radiant vision of beauty surrounded by flowers. He recalled the shy
pride and maidenly modesty with which she had met his ardent glances
and impassioned words. He thought of the meek and saddened expression
of her face, as he had seen it in these last hurried interviews, and
it seemed to him she had never appeared so lovely. He remembered with
a shudder what Madame Guirlande had said about the auction-stand. He
was familiar with such scenes, for he had seen women offered for
sale, and had himself bid for them in competition with rude, indecent
crowds. It was revolting to his soul to associate the image of Rosa
with such base surroundings; but it seemed as if some fiend persisted
in holding the painful picture before him. He seemed to see her
graceful figure gazed at by a brutal crowd, while the auctioneer
assured them that she was warranted to be an entirely new and
perfectly sound article,--a moss rosebud from a private royal
garden,--a diamond fit for a king's crown. And men, whose upturned
faces were like greedy satyrs, were calling upon her to open her ruby
lips and show her pearls. He turned restlessly on his pillow with a
muttered oath. Then he smiled as he thought to himself that, by saving
her from such degradation, he had acquired complete control of her
destiny. From the first moment he heard of her reverses, he had felt
that her misfortunes were his triumph. Madly in love as he had been
for more than a year, his own pride, and still more the dreaded scorn
of proud relatives, had prevented him from offering marriage; while
the watchful guardianship of her father, and her dutiful respect to
his wishes, rendered any less honorable alliance hopeless. But now he
was her sole protector; and though he had satisfied her scruples by
marriage, he could hide her away and keep his own secret; while she,
in the fulness of her grateful love, would doubtless be satisfied
with any arrangement he chose to make. But there still remained some
difficulties in his way. He was unwilling to leave his own luxurious
home and exile himself in the British West Indies; and if he should
bring the girls to Georgia, he foresaw that disastrous consequences
might ensue, if his participation in their elopement should ever be
discovered, or even suspected. "It would have been far more convenient
to have bought them outright, even at a hig