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THE SETTLERS OF LONG ARROW.
A Canadian Romance in Thirty-one Chapters.

CHAPTER XXI.

Beyond the city barriers of Quebec, there once stood a handsome house built in the French style, but with a lawn and pleasure ground laid out in the English manner, sloping down to the river St. Charles. The windows of the lower rooms opened on parterres of rich flowers and shrubs; beyond were clumps of trees; and then came the banks of the river, fringed with birch and willows, and thickets of native shrubs and creepers.

In a large drawing-room in this house was a lovely girl. Paintings hung on the walls; vases and ornaments of china, gold and precious stones; richly inlaid tables, portfolios of prints, and books, were scattered about. There were ample means for pleasant music provided; but the sweetest object in the room was Coral, who, kneeling beside a low couch at one of the opened windows, rested her head on her hand, and gazed with a sad, absent, absorbed air, on the blue sky, the green trees, and the clear, shining river which bounded her view.

It was a lovely day in September—the most beautiful month in the Canadian year—when the light, silvery frosts of the night give a peculiar clearness and purity to the air by day, and delicately touch the leaves of the trees with bright hues, which day by day increase in vividness and variety. A soft, faint breeze just stirred the sweet air, and fanned the leaves; and round white clouds floated over the blue sky, now intercepting the sun’s rays for a minute, and then leaving them clear and unclouded again, thus giving the most beautiful alternations of light and shadow to the scene. But none of these lovely aspects of nature, nothing that was around her, seemed present to the young girl’s eye or mind; her dreamy eye seemed piercing either the far future, or recalling the distant past; and even the light rustling of the gentle wind among the trees appeared to echo in her ear as

The dying swells
Of noises far away.

Ere long an elderly man entered the room. His figure was slight and emaciated, and his handsome features were worn and attenuated; his hair was quite white, and his brow was furrowed with care and gloom; but his dark eyes still retained their fire, and glittered in their deeply-set sockets, with a lustre which contrasted strangely with the pale, bloodless face which they lighted, reminding the beholder of “lamps in sepulchres,” and other ghastly images. It was the Count de Vallette, Coral’s father,—a melancholy example of that common calamity, a lost life. Gifted with