If any one had asked
Richard, "Are you really hoping that he has been killed in some Indian
fight?" Richard would have indignantly denied it; and yet he knew that
if such a fate had come to his cousin Millard, he would not have been
sorry. And now the man with the easy confidence of a soldier who is
accustomed to make his own welcome, wrote to say "that he was coming
to New Orleans, and hoped to spend a good deal of his time with them."
The information was most unwelcome to Richard. He was not anxious for
his sister to marry; least of all, to marry a frontier settler. He
could not endure the thought of Phyllis roughing life in some log-cabin
on the San Marino. That was at least the aspect in which he put the
question to himself. He meant that he could not endure that John
Millard should at the last get the better of him about his own sister.
And when he put his foot down passionately, and said, between his
closed teeth, "He shall not do it!" it was the latter thought he
answered.
He felt half angry at Phyllis for being so lovely when she sat down
opposite him at dinner time. And there was an unusual light in her
eyes and an indescribable elation in her manner which betrayed her
knowledge of the coming event to him.
"Phyllis," he asked, suddenly, "who told you John Millard was coming?"
"Harriet told me you had a letter from him this morning.
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