An Apache Princess

When with elongated face and exaggerated gloom of manner Aunt Janet

came to make her realize the awful consequences of her crime, Angela's

first impulse had been to cry out against her father's unreasoning

rage. When she learned that he was in close arrest,--to be tried,

doubtless, for his mad assault,--in utter revulsion of feeling, in

love and tenderness, in grief and contrition inexpressible, she had

thrown herself at his feet and, clasping his knees, had sobbed her

heart out in imploring his forgiveness for what she called her wicked,

heedless, heartless conduct. No one saw that blessed meeting, that

scene of mutual forgiveness, of sweet reconciliation; too sweet and

serene, indeed, for Janet's stern and Calvinistic mold.

Are we ever quite content, I wonder, that others' bairnies should be

so speedily, so entirely, forgiven? All because of this had all

Janet's manifestations of sympathy for Robert to be tempered with a

fine reserve. As for Angela, it would never do to let the child so

soon forget that this should be an awful lesson. Aunt Janet's manner,

therefore, when, butterfly net in hand, she required of her niece full

explanation of the presence in the room of this ravished trophy, was

something fraught with far too much of future punishment, of wrath

eternal. Even in her chastened mood Angela's spirit stood en garde.

"I have told father everything, auntie," she declared. "I leave it all

to him," and bore in silence the comments, without the utterance of

which the elder vestal felt she could not conscientiously quit the

field. "Bold," "immodest," "unmaidenly," "wanton," were a choice few

of Aunt Janet's expletives, and these were unresented. But when she

concluded with "I shall send this--thing to him at once, with my

personal apologies for the act of an irresponsible child," up sprang

Angela with rebellion flashing from her eyes. She had suffered

punishment as a woman. She would not now be treated as a child. To

Janet's undisguised amaze and disapprobation, Wren decided that Angela

herself should send both apology and net. It was the first missive of

the kind she had ever written, but, even so, she would not submit it

for either advice or criticism--even though its composition cost her

many hours and tears and sheets of paper. No one but the recipient had

so much as a peep at it, but when Blakely read it a grave smile

lighted his pallid and still bandaged face. He stowed the little note

in his desk, and presently took it out and read it again, and still

again, and then it went slowly into the inner pocket of his white sack

coat and was held there, while he, the wearer, slowly paced up and

down the veranda late in the starlit night. This was the evening of

Daly's funeral, the evening of the day on which he and his captain had

shaken hands and were to start afresh with better understanding.