Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White HunterStephens, Ann S. (Ann Sophia)
General
Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter
Stephens, Ann S. (Ann Sophia)
Dime novels; Indian women -- Fiction
Tears came into Martha's eyes, and she turned them reproachfully to
her lover; but, full of his heroic resolution to be tomahawked and
comfortably scalped on his own responsibility, he turned majestically,
without deigning to meet the tearful glance which was well calculated
to mitigate his jealous wrath.
Danforth, on being applied to, requested permission to defer his answer
till the morning, and the hunters left the house to divide the game,
which had been forgotten in the general excitement.
Danforth, who had lingered to the last, took up his cap, and whispering
good-night to Martha, left the house. The poor girl scarcely heeded his
departure. Her eyes filled with tears, and seating herself on a settee
which ran along one end of the room, she folded her arms on a board
which served as a back, and burying her face upon them, wept violently.
As she remained in this position, she heard a familiar step on the
floor. Her heart beat quick, fluttered a moment, and then settled
to its regular pulsations again, for her lover had seated himself
beside her. Martha wiped the tears from her eyes and remained quiet,
for she knew that he had returned, and with that knowledge, the
spirit of coquetry had revived; and when Jones, softened by her
apparent sorrow--for he had seen her parting with Danforth--put his
hand softly under her forehead and raised her face, the creature was
laughing--laughing at his folly, as he thought.
"Martha, you are doing wrong--wrong to yourself and to me," said the
disappointed lover, rising indignantly and taking his hat, with which
he advanced to the door.
"Don't go," said Martha, turning her head till one cheek only rested
on her arm, and casting a glance, half-repentant, half-comic, on her
retreating lover; "don't go off so; if you do, you'll be very sorry for
it."
Jones hesitated--she became very serious--the tears sprang to her eyes,
and she looked exceedingly penitent. He returned to her side. Had he
appealed to her feelings then--had he spoken of the pain she had given
him in her encouragement of another, she would have acknowledged the
fault with all proper humility; but he did no such thing--he was a
common-sense man, and he resolved to end his first love-quarrel in a
common-sense manner, as if common-sense ever had any thing to do with
lovers' quarrels. "I will reason with her," he thought. "He will say
I have made him very wretched, and I will tell him I am very sorry,"
_she_ thought.
"Martha," he said, very deliberately, "why do I find you on terms of
such familiarity with this Manhattan fellow?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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