420 WILD SPORTS IN THE SOUTH. 



Key, he was not analyst enough to tell how ; this, to his 

 sensitive heart, was a refusal, abject, persistent, unreason- 

 able. He felt that in her was a certain pride, and, lov- 

 ing her, acquired it himself. When he became the means 

 of her salvation at Key Biscayne, that pride grew side 

 by side with a species of knightly honor that would not 

 allow him to avail himself of the gratitude of the person 

 he had benefited. Such a coercion would be like selling 

 his bold deeds for his own advantage. She was helpless, 

 weak, and distressed ; he refused to ask what might be 

 conceded as a right, and what he had not, when pleading 

 as an outcast before a superior being, received before. 

 So modest he was, he saw not the longings that he had 

 awakened — so mutely, devotedly humble, he never 

 dreamed of success after his first hope was thwarted. 

 He walked by her side a servant, and turned back to the 

 woods again when the service was done, leaving her rich 

 in substance, yet poor in spirit, bowed down with a feel- 

 ing of being scorned, and yet of having caused that neg- 

 lect by her own act. 



Three years had passed since then, and had brought 

 no change to her feelings, though much to her wisdom. 

 Three years had given her wealth and acquaintance, and 

 a world of social life that had a bustle and a wakefulness 

 about it disconsonant with a mind that had passed so 

 many years in the quiet enjoyment of nature. She 

 attended races and regattas, travelled and visited, but to 

 her mind would come the moaning of the sea, and to her 

 eye almost nightly would appear a camp-fire with its 



