PETERSON’S MAGAZINE.
THE RISING TIDE.
BY CHARLES J. PETERSON.
CHAPTER I.
“‘Whither do you ride today, my dear?” said
Mrs. Florence to her daughter, as the latter,
attired in a handsome equestrian dress, entered
the parlor.
“I don’t know, mamma—just where the fancy of the moment takes me,” replied the daughter, stooping to kiss her mother’s forehead, and then proceeding to arrange her riding hit before ‘tire mirror.
“Do not go far, my child. I never see you venture out thus alone without a presentiment that something is to happen.”
“But you have so many presentiments, and all to no purpose,” gaily replied her daughter, “that I think we can afford to disregard them by this time. Yet, mamma,” she said, approaching her parent again, and throwing a fair arm fondly around the neck of that loved object, ‘if it really alarms you, I will give up riding.”
The widowed mother looked up fondly at her beautiful child, and kissing her, said—
“No, no, Alice, you shall not deprive yourself of almost the sole pleasure left to you. Pursue your daily rides. In this primitive district, so far removed from the high roads of commerce, there can be no real peril in riding out unattended: it is an idle, foolish fear on my part: only as you were always accustomed, in your dear father’s life, to have a servant when you rode, it seems odd to see you now without one: that is all; I dare say I shall soon get accustomed to it, as to other sacrifices.”
“Never think of it as a sacrifice again, mamma,” replied the beautiful girl. ‘Nothing is a sacrifice to me, while I have you left.”
‘God bless you, Alice,” answered the mother. “I am glad that, notwithstanding our reverses, you can still keep your beautiful Arab.”
Alice for reply put her arm around her mother’s waist, and drew her to the window. A superb white steed, ready caparisoned, and held by the sole male servant of the establishment, who officiated as groom and gardener both, stood pawning the earth in front of the cottage.
“Is he not beautiful?” said Alice, enthusiastically. ‘‘I do believe, dear mamma, that, next to you, I love Arab better than anything on earth. How fleetly he carries me! How boldly we leap the ditches and fences in our way! Oh! mamma, there is nothing so exhilirating as to gallop over the hills on a bracing October morning like this, and as you reach each new acclivity, catch a taste of the sea-breeze that drifts far inland, when the wind, as now,is from the east. And then, to pull up on some lofty height, and see glimpses of the ocean away in the distance, with perchance a sail whitening his dark, green bosom. Nothing, nothing makes the blood so dance in the veins, or fills the heart with equal exultation!”
The parent looked up admiringly at her child as the latter thus spoke: and indeed others, less favorably prejudiced, might have done the same. Alice was one of those tall, aristocratic-looking creatures, who, notwithstanding a certain slim- ness, realized, perhaps, the highest ideal of female beauty. Her figure was of the lordly Norman type, and perfect in its proportions; while every movement was graceful, yet dignified. Her face was of that almost divine beauty which we see in the Beatrice Cenci of Guido. The same dazzling complexion, the same blue eyes, the same golden hair; but combined with these also the same air of high resolve and almost masculine courage chiseled about the lines of the brow and mouth. Her countenance, always lovely, was now tran- scendantly beautiful, for it glowed all over with enthusiasm.
�
