her golden hair rested on her
flushed cheek, and nearly concealed the tear that had started to her
eye; "did I think this idle tongue of mine had pained you, I would
silence it forever. Cora can say, if Cora would, how justly we have
prized your services, and how deep--I had almost said, how fervent--is
our gratitude."

"And will Cora attest the truth of this?" cried Duncan, suffering the
cloud to be chased from his countenance by a smile of open pleasure.
"What says our graver sister? Will she find an excuse for the neglect of
the knight in the duty of a soldier?"

Cora made no immediate answer, but turned her face toward the water, as
if looking on the sheet of the Horican. When she did bend her dark eyes
on the young man, they were yet filled with an expression of anguish
that at once drove every thought but that of kind solicitude from his
mind.

"You are not well, dearest Miss Munro!" he exclaimed; "we have trifled
while you are in suffering!"

"'Tis nothing," she answered, refusing his support with feminine
reserve. "That I cannot see the sunny side of the picture of life, like
this artless but ardent enthusiast," she added, laying her hand lightly,
but affectionately, on the arm of her sister, "is the penalty of
experience, and, perhaps, the misfortune of my nature. See," she
continued, as if determined to shake off infirmity, in a sense of duty;
"look around you, Major Heyward, and tell me what a prospect is this for
the daughter of a soldier whose greatest happiness is his honor and his
military renown."

"Neither ought nor shall be tarnished by circumstances over which he has
had no control," Duncan warmly replied. "But your words recall me to my
own duty. I go now to your gallant father, to hear his determination
in matters of the last moment to the defense. God bless you in every
fortune, noble--Cora--I may and must call you." She frankly gave him her
hand, though her lip quivered, and her cheeks gradually became of ashly
paleness. "In every fortune, I know you will be an ornament and honor
to your sex. Alice, adieu"--his voice changed from admiration to
tenderness--"adieu, Alice; we shall soon meet again; as conquerors, I
trust, and amid rejoicings!"

Without waiting for an answer from either, the young man threw himself
down the grassy steps of the bastion, and moving rapidly across the
parade, he was quickly in the presence of their father. Munro was pacing
his narrow apartment with a disturbed ai