The Lake County star. [volume] (Chase, Mich.) 1873-current, 1875-05-06
style the Ambassadors cortege entered
Kazala.

A night scene In tent piched in the
spring g-touched Asiatic wilderness hun
dred miles southwark of Kazala; a
young man in the uniformIpf an Ameri-
can officer busy with paperSat his impro-
vised desk; Kirghis boy noiselessly re-
moving the remnants of repast the
young officer, Hartley Berne; the Kir-
gis slave, his page, his servant, his adorer,
Reva.
At Kazala, Berne had parted with the
Ambassador, to continue his journey to
Khiva under native escort alone. 1t was
not until two days' had parted him from
the Russian peasant that the young
American discovered that the boyish at
tendant, furnished by his Kirghis guide,
was no other than the wild beauty of the
desert, who, with all the art of a Partisan
diplomatist, had accomplished her will,
and who, with the impetuosity of Juliet,
passionately worshiped him.
1t can not be denied that there was
something in Hartley Berne's nature that
responded to the isolation and idolatry
of this desert romance. He was not in
sensible to the charms of the beautiful
and adorable Reva. Nevertheless her
presence troubled him. His manner to-
ward her became daily more cold his
brow darkened when she approached.
And as she had seen the meteor cool and
darken, she saw this idol of her heart
resolve from star into a stone.
This evening, as Berne bent studiously
over his papers, Reva, her task done,
threw herself upon pallet in the tents
shadowy recess, and pretended to sleep.
But from time to time she cast at the
American stealthy glances. He, too,
occasionally glanced covertly at her.
Whenever he did so he sighed. At last,
sure that she slept, he drew from his
bosom gold incased miniature. He set
it up before him, and as he continued
writing he gazed upon it at the close of
each paragraph or page, every time SEEM
ing to draw from it something calming,
encouraging, inspiring.
At midnight an unusual sound without
his tent arrested his attention. He sprang
up suddenly. and parting the curtains
of his tent, went out upon the mOonlit
moor.
"At last! at lastw said, or rather
hissed, between her closed teeth, in Rus
sian patois, the disguised page Reva, as,
with the coiling silentness of serpent,
she drew herself from the shadowy
pallet to the lighted desk-"at lastp'
She held in her hands the miniature.
She turned toward herself the gilded
disk, but she could not interpret the en-
graved inscription, "In Amore: Gertrude
Atherton." She interpreted, however,
with the quickness of jealousy, the sig
nifcance of the portrait.
That night Hartley Berne dreamed of
came his garment was not busted, his
spurs were not frightened, his repast was
not spread. His little valet, his slave, his
inamorata, had fed. He saw her no
more. Once, indeed, farther on his jour
ney, deeper in the south, he spent one
night in the picturesque tent of a Rights
prince, and fancied, as he lay half sleep
ing, famed by salubrious Odors and
soothed by the dulcet tinkling of a
guitar, that in one of the glancing forms
of two young maidens called sisters he
recognized his vanished Reva.
Two years after Hartley Berne's ad-
venturous Asiatic pilgrimage, when his
bride, Gertrude Atherton, asked-as
what woman would not ?-whether, in
all his wanderings, in heart and thought
he had been true to her, he answered,
with loves enthusiasm, eyes"
And if Hartley Berne could have seen
at that moment his once passionate little
idolator, Reva, he would hardly have
known her in the sweet, satisfied wife of
the Rights chieftain, sharing with him
the simple happy days, moving from
point to point along the river-kissed will
derness, in his free nomadic life.