Лучшие романы Томаса Майна Рида / The Best of Thomas Mayne Reid

There was no observer of it save the two individuals who alternately bent the bow, shooting with aВ single arrow; and by them it was understood.

“Love laughs at locksmiths.” The old adage is scarce suited to Texas, where lock-making is an unknown trade.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” expresses pretty much the same sentiment, appropriate to all time and every place. Never was it more correctly illustrated than in that exchange of bow-shots across the channel of the Leona.

Louise Poindexter had the will; Maurice Gerald had suggested the way.

Chapter 31

A Stream Cleverly Crossed

The sagittary correspondence could not last for long. They are but lukewarm lovers who can content themselves with a dialogue carried on at bowshot distance. Hearts brimful of passion must beat and burn together – in close proximity – each feeling the pulsation of the other. “If there be an Elysium[215 - Elysium – in Greek mythology, a land of perfect happiness, the paradise to which immortal heroes were sent after death] on earth, it is this!”

Maurice Gerald was not the man – nor Louise Poindexter the woman – to shun such a consummation.

It came to pass: not under the tell-tale light of the sun, but in the lone hour of midnight, when but the stars could have been witnesses of their social dereliction.

Twice had they stood together in that garden grove – twice had they exchanged love vows – under the steel-grey light of the stars; and a third interview had been arranged between them.

Little suspected the proud planter – perhaps prouder of his daughter than anything else he possessed – that she was daily engaged in an act of rebellion – the wildest against which parental authority may pronounce itself.

His own daughter – his only daughter – of the best blood of Southern aristocracy; beautiful, accomplished, everything to secure him a splendid alliance – holding nightly assignation with a horse-hunter!

Could he have but dreamt it when slumbering upon his soft couch, the dream would have startled him from his sleep like the call of the eternal trumpet!

He had no suspicion – not the slightest.