Page:A Nameless Nobleman.djvu/94

resolve, and should revenge the disappointment not only upon herself, but the dear father whom she loved better than herself.

She stood gazing out at the open door, the slow tears rising to her eyes and brimming unheeded over, while the sleigh was slowly turned, and so slowly driven out of the yard, that one might imagine the driver was granting time for even the tardiest of recalls; but none came, and it passed out of sight, leaving the ghostly sound of the snow-muffled sleigh-bells lingering for a few moments upon the night; and then no sight, no sound, but the white expanse of the level waste broken by spectral and snow-sheeted forms of familiar objects, and the hiss of the sleety snow as it smote the unshuttered windows, and heaped itself in fantastic wreaths and drifts about the lonely house.

A sudden dash of stinging sleet upon her face roused Molly from her abstraction; and with a heavy sigh she closed the door, shook the snow from her clothes and hair, and, re-entering the kitchen, shut the porch-door, and looked about her. The chairs hastily pushed back, the plates and knives and glasses around the table, even the wet print of feet beside the hearth, all told of late companionship and present abandonment; and for the first time a little chill of terror crept through the girl's healthy blood, and of a sudden she remembered Reuben's story of the escaped Frenchmen supposed to be prowling in the neighborhood. What sort of being a Frenchman might be, Molly did not know; but he was an enemy of her country if not of herself; and it was not so many years