Colonel Preston Chester and his son Langdon were at breakfast two days after this. The dining-room of the old mansion was a long, narrow chamber on the first floor, connected with the brick kitchen outside by a wooden passage, roofed, latticed at both sides, and vine-grown. The dining-room had several wide windows which opened on a level with the floor of the side veranda. Strong coffee, hot biscuits, and birds delicately browned were brought in by a turbaned black woman, who had once been a slave in the family, and then she discreetly retired.

The old gentleman, white-haired, pink and clear of complexion, and wearing a flowing mustache and an imperial, which he nervously clutched and twisted in his soft fingers, was not in a good humor.

"Here I am ready to go to Savannah, as I promised, to pay a visit and bring your mother back," he fumed, "and now find that you have taxed my credit at the bank so heavily with your blasted idleness and poker debts that they actually gave me a lecture about my financial condition. But I've certainly headed you off, sir. I left positive orders that no check of yours is to be honored during my absence."

"You did that, father? Why—"

"Of course I did it. I can't put up with your extravagance and damnable habits, and I don't intend to."

"But, father, I've heard you say you cost your parents on an average of four thousand dollars a year before you got married, and—"

"Don't begin that twaddle over again," roared the Colonel in his coffee-cup. "What my father did for me in those easy times has nothing to do with our condition in the present day. Besides, it was the custom of the times to live high, while now it's coming to be a disgrace to be idle or to have luxuries. We've got to work like the rest at something or other. Here's that Luke King back from the West with enough money to install his whole gang of white trash in one of the best places in the entire river valley, and is conducting a paper in Atlanta that everybody is talking about. Why, blast it all, I heard Governor Crawford say at the Capital City Club the other day that if he—mind you, the governor of the State—if he could get King's influence he would be re-elected sure. Think of that, when I put a fortune into your education. You are doing nothing for your name, while he's climbing like that on the poor chances he had."

"Oh, he had education, such as he needed," Langdon replied, with a retaliatory glance at his father. "Ann Boyd sent him to school, you know."

The old man's eyes wavered; he drank from his cup silently, and then carefully wiped his mustache on his napkin. It was not the first time Langdon had dared to pronounce the woman's name in his presence, and it looked as if the Colonel dreaded further allusions.

"Well, I've got to make the trip to Savannah," he said, still avoiding his son's glance, and trying to keep up his attitude of cold reproof. He was becoming convinced that Langdon was acquiring a most disagreeable habit of justifying his own wild conduct by what he had heard of his father's past, and this was decidedly irritating to the planter, who found enough to reproach himself with in reflecting upon what he had gone through without being held accountable for another career which looked quite as bad in the bud and might bear even worse fruit.

"Yes, I think myself, all jokes aside, that you ought to go," Langdon said. "I'll do the best I can to keep things straight here. The hunting will be good, and I can manage to kill time. You'll want to take along some spending money, father. Those old chums of yours down there will draw you into a poker game sure."

"I'll cut that out, I reckon"—the Colonel smiled in spite of himself. Langdon was such a copy of what he had been at the same age that it seemed, under stress of certain memories, almost wrong to reprove him. "No, I've sworn off from cards, and that's one thing I want you to let alone. I don't want to hear of your having any more of those all-night carouses here, leaving bullet-holes in your grandfather's portrait, as you and your dissolute gang did the last time I was away. It's a wonder to me you and those fellows didn't burn the house down."

At this juncture Langdon was glad to see the overseer of the plantation on the veranda, and the Colonel went out to give him some instructions.

Two nights later, when he had seen his father off at the door and turned back into the great, partly lighted house, Langdon set about thinking how he could spend the evening and rid himself of the abiding sense of loneliness that had beset him. He might stroll over to Wilson's store, but the farmers he met there would be far from congenial, for he was not popular with many of them, and unless he could meet, which was unlikely at night, some drummer who would play poker freely with the funds of the house he represented against Langdon's ready promises to pay, his walk would be fruitless. No, he would not go to the store, he decided; and still he was in no mood, at so early an hour, for the solitude of his room or the antiquated library, from the shelves of which frowned the puritanical books of his Presbyterian ancestors. Irresolute, he had wandered to the front veranda again, and as he stood looking eastward he espied, through the trees across the fields and meadows, a light. It was Jane Hemingway's kitchen candle, and the young man's pulse beat more rapidly as he gazed at it. He had occasionally seen Virginia outside the house of evenings, and had stolen chats with her. Perhaps he might have such luck again. In any case, nothing would be lost in trying, and the walk would kill time. Besides, he was sure the girl was beginning to like him; she now trusted him more, and seemed always willing to talk to him. She believed he loved her; who could doubt it when he himself had been surprised at his tenderness and flights of eloquence when inspired by her rare beauty and sweetness? Sometimes he believed that his feeling for the beautiful, trustful girl was a love that would endure, but when he reflected on the difference in their stations in life he had grave and unmanly doubts. As he walked along the road, the light of Jane's candle, like the glow of a fire-fly, intermittently appearing and disappearing ahead of him through the interstices of the trees and foliage, the memory of the gossip about his father and Ann Boyd flashed unpleasantly upon him. Was he, after all, following his parent's early bent? Was family history repeating itself? But when the worst was said about that affair, who had been seriously injured? Certainly not the easy-going Colonel, surely not the sturdy pariah herself, who had, somehow, turned her enforced isolation to such purpose that she was rich in the world's goods and to all appearances cared not a rap for public opinion.

That day had been the gloomiest in Virginia's life. Early in the morning Jane had gone to Darley for the twentieth time to try to borrow the money with which to defray her expenses to Atlanta. She had failed again, and came home at dusk absolutely dejected.

"It's all up with me!" she groaned, as she sank heavily into a chair in front of the cheerful fire Virginia had in readiness, and pushed her worn shoes out to the flames. "I went from one old friend to another, telling them my condition, but they seemed actually afraid of me, treating me almost like a stranger. They all told tales of need, although they seemed to have plenty of everything. Judge Crane met me in Main Street and told me I could appeal to the county fund and get on the pauper list, but without offering to help me; he said he knew I'd almost rather die than fall so low. No, I'll not do that, Virginia. That's what would tickle Ann Boyd and some others powerfully."

With lagging steps and a heart like lead, Virginia went about preparing the simple meal. Her mother ate only hot buttered toast with boiled milk on it to soften it for her toothless gums, but the fair cook scarcely touched food at all. Her mother's grewsome affliction was in the sensitive girl's mind all through each successive day, and even at night her sleep was broken by intermittent dreams of this or that opportunity to raise the coveted money. Sometimes it was the jovial face of a crude, penniless neighbor who laughed carelessly as he handed her a cumbersome roll of bank-bills; again she would find a great heap of gold glittering in the sun, only to wake with her delicate fingers tightly clasped on nothing at all—to wake that she might lie and listen to Jane's sighs and moans as the old woman crouched over the ash-buried coals to light a tallow-dip to look, for the thousandth time, at the angry threat of fate upon her withered breast.

To-night, greatly wearied by her long ride and being on her feet so long, Jane went to bed early, and, when she was alone, Virginia, with a mental depression that had become almost physical pain, went out and sat on the front door-step in the moonlight. That very day a plan of her own in regard to the raising of the money had fallen to earth. She had heard of the munificent gift Luke King had made to his mother, and she determined that she would go to him, lay the case before him, and pledge herself to toil for him in any capacity till he was repaid; but when she had gone as far in the direction of the newly purchased farm as the Hincock Spring, she met Mary Bruce in a new dress and hat, and indirectly discovered that King had given up his last dollar of ready money to secure the property for his people. No, she would not take her own filial troubles to a young man who was so nobly battling with his own. At any other moment she might have had time to admire King's sacrifice, but her mind was too full of her own depressing problem to give thought to that of another. Her sharp reproof to him for his neglect of his mother during his absence in the West flitted through her memory, and at a less troubled moment she would have seen how ridiculously unjust her childish words must have sounded.

As she sat, weighted down with these things, she heard a step down the road. It was slow and leisured, if not deliberately cautious. It was accompanied by a persistent spark of fire which flitted always on a straight line, in view and out, among the low bushes growing close to the fence along the roadside. A moment later a handsome face in the flare of a burning cigar appeared, smiling confidently at the gate. It was Langdon Chester.

"Come out here," he said, in a soft, guarded voice. "I want to see you."

Virginia rose, listened to ascertain if her mother was still asleep, and then, drawing her light shawl about her shoulders, she went to the fence. He reached over the gate and took her hand and pressed it warmly. "I was awfully afraid I'd not see you," he said. "I've failed so many times. My father left to-day, and I am very lonely in that big house with not a soul nearer than the negro-quarter."

"It must be lonely," Virginia said, trying to be pleasant and to throw off her despondency.

"Your mother went to town to-day, didn't she?" Chester pursued, still holding the hand which showed an indifferent inclination to quit his clasp. "I think I saw her coming back. Did she get what she went for?"

"No, she failed utterly," Virginia sighed. "I don't know what to do. She's suffering awfully—not in bodily pain, you know, for there is none at all, but in the constant and morbid fear of death. It is an awful thing to be face to face, day after day, night after night, with a mother who is in such agony. I never dreamed such a fate could be in store for any young girl. It is actually driving me crazy."

"Yes, yes," Langdon said, hesitatingly. "I want to tell you something. I had a talk with my father about her just before he left. I've worried over it, too, little girl. Folks may run me down, you know, but I've got real feelings; and so, as a last resort, as I say, I told him about it. He's hard up himself, as you may know, along with our heavy family expenses, and interest on debts, and taxes, but I managed to put it in such a way as to get him interested, and he's promised to let me have the money provided he can make a certain deal down at Savannah. But he says it must be kept absolutely quiet, you understand. If he sends me this money, you must not speak of it to any one—the old man is very peculiar."

Virginia's heart bounded, the hot blood of a dazzling new hope pulsed madly in her veins. The tensity of her hand in his warm clasp relaxed; her eyes, into which his own passionate ones were melting, held kindling fires of gratitude and trust.

"Oh, oh, oh!" she cried, "if he only would!"

"Well, there is a splendid chance of his doing it," Langdon said. "I was awfully afraid to mention the subject to him, you know, for fear that he would suspect my interest was wholly due to you, but it happens that he has never seen us together, and so he thought it was simply my sympathy for one of our neighbors. I had to do something, Virginia. I couldn't stay idle when my beautiful little sweetheart was in such downright trouble."

With a furtive glance towards the house and up and down the road, Langdon drew her towards him. Just one instant she resisted, and then, for the first time in her life, she allowed him to kiss her without open protest. She remained thus close to him, permitting him to stroke her soft, rounded cheeks gently. Never before were two persons impelled by diverse forces so closely united.

"When do you—you think your father will write?" she asked, her voice low, her soul almost shrieking in joy.

"That depends," said Chester. "You see, he may not get at the matter the very day he arrives in Savannah, for he is a great old codger to let matters slide in the background while he is meeting old friends. But, little girl, I don't intend to let it slip out of his mind. I'll drop him a line and urge him to fix it up if possible. That, I think, will bring him around. Your mother is sound asleep," he added, seductively; "let's walk a little way down the road. I sha'n't keep you long. I feel awfully happy with you all to myself."

She raised no objection as he unfastened the latch of the gate with deft, noiseless fingers and, smiling playfully, drew her after him and silently closed the opening.

"Now, this is more like it," he said. "Lovers should have the starry skies above them and open fields about. Forget your mother a little while, Virginia. It will all come out right, and you and I will be the happiest people in the world. Great Heavens! how perfectly lovely you are in the moonlight! You look like a statue of Venus waking to life."

They had reached the brook which rippled on brown stones across the road at the foot of the slight rise on which the cottage stood, when they saw some one approaching. It was Ann Boyd driving her cow home, her heavy skirts pinned up half-way to her stout knees. With one sharp, steady stare at them, Ann, without greeting of any kind, lowered her bare, dew-damp head and trudged on.

"It's that miserly old hag, Ann Boyd," Langdon said, lightly. "I don't like her any more than she does me. I reckon that old woman has circulated more lies about me than all the rest of the country put together."

At the first sight of Ann, Virginia had withdrawn her hand from Langdon's arm and passionate clasp of fingers, but the action had not escaped Ann's lynx eyes.

"It's coming, thank God, it's coming as fast as a dog can trot!" she chuckled as she plodded along after her waddling cow. "Now, Jane Hemingway, you'll have something else to bother about besides your blasted cancer—something that will cut your pride as deep as that does your selfish flesh. It won't fail to come, either. Don't I know the Chester method? Huh, if I don't, it isn't known. With his head bent that way, and holding her hand with hand and arm both at once, he might have been his father over again. Huh, I felt like tearing his eyes out, just now—the young beast! I felt like she was me, and the old brink was yawning again right at my feet. Huh, I felt that way about Jane Hemingway's daughter—that's the oddest thing of all! But she is beautiful; she's the prettiest thing I ever saw in all my life. No wonder he is after her; she's the greatest prize for a Chester in Georgia. Jane's asleep right now, but she'll wake before long and she'll wonder with all her wounded pride how God ever let her close her eyes. Yes, my revenge is on the way. I see the light its blaze has cast on ahead. It may be Old Nick's torch—what do I care? He can wave it, wave it, wave it!"

She increased her step till she overtook her cow. Laying her hand on the animal's back, she gently patted it. "Go on home to your calf, you hussy," she laughed. "The young of even your sort is safer, according to the plan that guides the world, than Jane Hemingway's. She's felt so safe, too, that she's made it her prime object in life to devil a person for exactly what's coming under her own roof—exactly to a gnat's heel!"