She arose, and was
leaving the apartment with lingering steps, when the Pilot, touching her
hand, whispered to her impressively:
"Alice, we meet again before I leave this island forever?"
"We meet in the morning, John," she returned in the same tone of voice,
"in the apartments of Miss Howard."
He dropped her hand, and she glided from the room, when the impatient
sentinel closed the door, and silently turned the key on his prisoner.
The Pilot remained in a listening attitude, until the light footsteps of
the retiring pair were no longer audible, when he paced his confined
apartment with perturbed steps, occasionally pausing to look out at the
driving clouds and the groaning oaks that were trembling and rocking
their broad arms in the fitful gusts of the gale. In a few minutes the
tempest in his own passions had gradually subsided to the desperate and
still calmness that made him the man he was; when he again seated
himself where Alice had found him, and began to muse on the events of
the times, from which the transition to projecting schemes of daring
enterprise and mighty consequences was but the usual employment of his
active and restless mind.
CHAPTER XV.
"_Sir And._. I have no exquisite reason for't, but I've reason
good enough."
_Twelfth Night._
The countenance of Captain Borroughcliffe, when the sentinel admitted
him to the apartment he had selected, was in that state of doubtful
illumination, when looks of peculiar cunning blend so nicely with the
stare of vacancy, that the human face is rendered not unlike an April
day, now smiling and inviting, and at the next moment clouded and
dreary.
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