d, upon, the bed--he took out Maria's hasty note--he read the
words "Go not to the council" at least fifty times over. There was
not the minutest particle of each letter of each word that he did
not typify in his heart. Her delicate and expressive, yet faithless
hand had traced the whole. It was enough. It was the last relic of
herself.

CHAPTER XIV.

"I would have some conference with you that concerns you nearly."
--_Much Ado About Nothing._

When Ronayne rejoined his friend, all the preparations he intended
making had been completed, and Mrs. Elmsley having despatched a
servant to say that breakfast was waiting for them, the latter,
after having stationed Corporal Collins at the gate to give early
notice of the approach of the Indians, linked his arm in that of
Ronayne, and conducted him to his rooms.

It was, of course, the first time the Virginian had seen Mrs.
Elmsley since the preceding evening, when, with Mrs. Headley, she
had been a pained witness of the desolating grief she so deeply
shared herself. The swollen eyelid and the pale cheek attested that
little sleep had visited her eyes during the subsequent part of
the night; and when she affectionately took the proffered hand of
Ronayne, whose composedness she was greatly surprised and pleased
to witness, there was a melancholy expression of sympathy in her
glance that tried all the powers of self-possession of the latter.

How different was that breakfast table from what it had been on
former occasions! How often, both before and after their marriage,
had Ronayne and his wife partaken of the hospitable board, with
hearts light as gratified love could render them, and exhilarated
by the witty tallies of the amiable hostess, who, full of life and
gaiety herself, sought ever to render her more sedate friend as
exuberant in spirit as herself. How graceful the manner in which
she recommended her exquisitely-made coffee, her deliciously-dried
bear and venison hams, the luxuriously-flavored and slightly-smoked
white fish from the Superior and the Sault; and with what art she
allured the appetite from one delicacy to another, until scarcely
an article of food at her table was left untasted. And yet all
this, not in a spirit of ostentatious display of her own aptitude
in these somewhat sensual enjoyments, but from a desire, by the
exercise of those little niceties of attention which insensibly
win upon the heart, to please, to gratify--to make sen