Then he absented himself from Mont Calm for several days. Elsie did not grow pale or thin; she was too sanguine for that; but she became uneasy, then anxious, then restless, and would walk about looking silently from the windows, particularly the back windows that overlooked the forest road leading down to the Hollow; or looking into her father’s or her mother’s face with an anxious, appealing look of silent inquiry. If the door-bell were rung, she would start violently, pause breathlessly, turn very pale, ask eagerly of the servant who returned, “who was that?” The answer, “Judge Jacky Wylie,” or “Marse Roebuck” caused her to sink back in her seat, disappointed and blushing with mortification. And yet only two or three days had passed; but then Magnus had been in the habit of coming twice a day, and staying over night; and two or three days seems to a young, impatient heart like two or three eternities. At last General Garnet, in the blackest rage and the brightest smile, put a pair of pistols in his pocket, mounted his magnificent black war-horse Death, and rode down to Hemlock Hollow, with the deliberate intention of courteously inquiring into Dr. Hardcastle’s motives of conduct, and blowing his brains out if the answer should not prove satisfactory. Not that he sympathized with Elsie, or believed in broken hearts, but that he had a saving faith in the junction of estates, and a high respect for the “honor of his house.” He found Magnus looking sallow and haggard, and immediately surmised that he had been ill, reproached him in a polite, gentlemanly way for not having informed his friends of his indisposition, and finally hoped that he had recovered. Magnus pleaded guilty to illness, and much care and anxiety, and spoke of the pain that enforced absence from Elsie gave him. Not for the world would Magnus have hinted that Elsie’s coldness had driven him away, and that despair had made him ill; he knew too well that such a communication would be visited with great severity by her father upon the head of Elsie. And he judged rightly—General Garnet’s heart was set on the marriage of those two joining plantations. If Magnus had backed out, he would have shot him like a dog. If Elsie had retreated, he would have turned her out of doors. If both had broken off, by mutual consent, he would have—Satan only knows what he would not have done. As it was now, he was perfectly satisfied with Magnus, insisted that he should come over the day of the ball, if not before, received his promise to do so, and took leave. CHAPTER XVII. THE BALL—THE UNEXPECTED GUEST.