"Alice May, and Bruising Bill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ingraham Joseph Holt)

heard. The next moment several young girls preceded by two elderly ladies
appeared conducted by one of the party.
They were looking earnest, anxious and hurried.
`Your friends?' asked Edward.
`Yes.'
At this same moment she was discovered; and they all came flying towards her.
Amid the exclamations, embracings, chidings, wonderings, and joy at recovering
her, Edward retired unperceived. Alice, after being told a hundred times by half
a dozen dear voices, how much she had been sought for, how they believed she had
been drowned in `the lake,' or had been spirited away, or had eloped with some
lover, was triumphantly escorted along the turnpike towards the city.
CHAPTER III.
A year elapsed and Alice May left the boarding school to return to Louisiana,
for she was a dark-eyed child of the sunny south. She returned home with her
father a betrothed bride! During the year that ensued her first interview with
Edward Orr, in Mount Auburn, and the bow she had from him at the window, he had
sought her acquaintance, and intimacy grew to love. They parted in the
drawing-room of the Tremont, where he had called to bid her good-bye the evening
preceding her departure. He promised in the spring to come out and be
marriedЧfor till then he would not come into possession of his estate. Their
engagement was known to and approved of by her father, a tall, handsome man,
with a haughty air, and manners something cold and unprepossessing. Edward did
not like him from the first; perhaps because his arrival in Boston was the
signal of his departure from Alice. He was, however, tender and affectionate to
his child, who seemed to be devotedly attached to him. Of him, Edward had
learned that he was a wealthy planter who resided near Lauvidais in the vicinity
of New Orleans, that he was a widower, and that Alice was his only child.
The parting between the lovers was favored by the voluntary and judicious
absence of Colonel May from the room, and with the usual protestations of love,
in this case, painfully sincere, and a promise mutually drawn from each other to
write once a week. Alice at length received the last lingering kissЧand the next
moment was left weeping, alone.
It was the evening of the 22d of February. It was to be celebrated by one of the
most magnificent assemblies that had ever been in the capital of Louisiana. In a
planters' villa a few miles from the city was one fair inmate preparing for the
brilliant scene. It was Alice May. Four months had elapsed since she had left
Edward, and her love burned clear and pure and steady. He was her idolЧher heart
of hearts. She wrote to him oftener than he had stipulated, and was thinking of
him daily, hourly. Her letters were transcripts of her heart's deep, holy and
fervent feelings. Her life was wrapped up in his, and she knew from his letters
that he loved her with the same unwavering devotion.
She had been much courted, caressed and flattered since her return home. In
every place she was the star of all eyes. But her love for Edward Orr was the
polar star of all her regard, and the compliments, the flattery and homage she
received, made no impression upon her. If she had had her own will she would
have withdrawn from society; for she cared for no pleasure that he did not share
with her. But her father, proud of her extraordinary beauty, and flattered by
the attention paid her, carried her to every public place of amusement, with
which the city was then rife. On the present occasion she had entreated to
remain at home, as she had felt all day unusually depressed. But he had a motive