so it was arranged that Claudia should visit her young preserver on
the following morning.

CHAPTER XLV.

THE INTERVIEW.

The lady of his love re-entered there;
She was serene and smiling then, and yet
She knew she was by him beloved--she knew,
For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart
Was darken'd by her shadow; and she saw
That he was wretched; but she saw not all.
He took her hand, a moment o'er his face
A tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced, and then it faded as it came.

--_Byron_.

It was as yet early morning; but the day promised to be sultry, and all
the windows of Ishmael's chamber were open to facilitate the freest
passage of air. Ishmael lay motionless upon his cool, white bed, letting
his glances wander abroad, whither his broken limbs could no longer
carry him.

His room, being a corner one, rejoiced in four large windows, two
looking east and two north. Close up to these windows grew the
clustering woods. Amid their branches even the wildest birds built
nests, and their strange songs mingled with the rustle of the golden
green leaves as they glimmered in the morning sun and breeze.

It was a singular combination, that comfortable room, abounding in all
the elegancies of the highest civilization, and that untrodden
wilderness in which the whip-poor-will cried and the wild eagle
screamed.

And Ishmael, as he looked through the dainty white-draped windows into
the tremulous shadows of the wood, understood how the descendant of
Powhatan, weary of endless brick walls, dusty streets, and crowded
thoroughfares, should, as soon as he was free from official duties, fly
to the opposite extreme of all these--to his lodge in this unbroken
forest, where scarcely a woodman's ax had sounded, where scarcely a
human foot had fallen. He sympathized with the "monomania" of Randolph
Merlin in not permitting a thicket to be thinned out, a road to be
opened, or a tree to be trimmed on his wild woodland estate; so that
here at least, nature should have her own way, with no hint of the
world's labor and struggle to disturb her vital repose.

As these reveries floated through the clear, active brain of the invalid
youth, the door of his chamber softly opened.

Why did Ishmael's heart bound in his bosom, and every pulse throb?

She stood within the open doorway! How lovely she looked, with her soft,
white muslin morning dress floating freely around her graceful form, and
her