Under the
inspiration of hope her motions were lithe and swift as a leopard's.
Within five minutes after Miss Burton's arrival, a carriage containing
herself, Stanton, and two stout men, dashed furiously towards the
ravine in which Van Berg was lying, and a buggy was sent with equal
rapidity for a physician. Then came to poor Ida the awful suspense
and waiting, which is so often woman's part in life's tragedies.
"Oh, can it be," she thought, with thrills of dread and horror,
"that he has attempted my crime?" and she grew sick and faint.
Then she resolutely put the suspicion away from her as unjust to
him. "Will they never return? O God, if they should be too late!"
She stood on the piazza with eyes dilated and strained,
in one direction, caring not what any one saw or surmised; but in
the increasing excitement, as the rumor spread and grew, she was
unnoticed.
At last the carriage appeared, and it was driven so slowly and
carefully that it suggested to the poor girl the deliberate and
mournful pace of a funeral procession, when all need for haste is
past forever, and she sprang down the steps in her intense anxiety,
and took some swift steps before she controlled herself.
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