The next morning ushered in Miss Jessie Floyd's birthday anniversary. The emancipated housemaid, ancient Sally, had given Lance timely warning of this occasion, and he had taken the precaution to send to New York for a present which he thought might be acceptable.

The question as to what sort of a gift he should select had been a hard one to decide. If the truth must be told, he had allowed himself the inappropriate but impassioned notion that he would like to give her a ring; inappropriate because he had not yet succeeded in effecting those preliminaries which justify a young man in giving a ring to a young woman; though, except for that, it was exactly what would best have conveyed his sentiments. Just why an ornament for a lady's hand should have this potent significance, when it is her ear that receives the lover's confession, was not perfectly clear to him; yet it was plain that there was no insurmountable objection to his offering Miss Jessie a pair of ear-drops. He therefore ordered some pearl ones, hoping to please her. To please himself, he ordered a ring. But the little packet which lay beside her plate at the breakfast-table, that morning, contained only the ear-drops. The ring was securely locked in Lance's private consciousness and his trunk.

Perhaps in order to appease his own self-reproaches for cherishing this jewelled secret, but also to prevent any embarrassment in Jessie's receiving a costly trifle from him, Lance thought it best to let Colonel Floyd know of his intention beforehand. He did so, late in the evening, after returning from his solitary expedition.

"I hope this will be quite agreeable to you, sir," he ventured, with becoming deference, when he had explained.

The colonel remembered that he himself had once been young, and probably found it easy to gauge the effort it cost his youthful friend to maintain this deference in a case where he was positive that he had an inalienable right to do as he pleased.

"My dear Lance," he replied, "neither my daughter nor myself can need any outward token to assure us of the kindly feeling you entertain toward us. That is the only reason why I might regret that you have decided to offer one. A simple congratulation or good wishes would have been enough, I assure you; but I appreciate your thoughtfulness, and Jessie, I am sure, will be delighted."

"Thank you, colonel. Then it is all right," said Lance, decisively, feeling as if he had just snapped the cover tight over the pearls and rescued them from loss.

They were sitting in the room which the colonel, with innocent grandeur, called his library, surrounded with a few editions of English and Latin classics, flanked by rows of obsolete works largely relating to politics; and they were engaged in the unscholarly pastime of sipping whiskey and water. It may be that the beverage had softened the colonel into a pensive mood.

"Speaking of congratulations," he said, "these anniversaries begin to make me think that my Jessie perhaps hasn't got so much to be congratulated for."

"I think she has a great deal," said his guest, with some fervor. "More than I have, at any rate. She still has her father—" his listener smiled sedately—"she has her old home, and—and herself!"

Lance had not known in advance that he was going to wind up with those words, and was himself rather astonished at them.

The colonel braced his neck and looked at the young man somewhat narrowly for an instant; after which he subsided, and observed, good-humoredly: "That is saying a good deal, too. What I had in mind, however, was the changed condition of everything here—the melancholy changes that have come since the war. When Fairleigh Park, sir, embraced five hundred acres instead of twelve, and when I had a hundred good niggers, it was a very different matter. Why, sir, even in this poor house there was hardly a stick or a rag left on my return from the field. My books"—here the colonel waved his arm with proprietary pride at the faded volumes on his shelves—"my books fortunately had been removed to Wilmington, where my wife and daughter were in the care of friends; but a foraging party of the Northern soldiery came here, sir, in my absence, and, though there wasn't a soul opposed them, they broke the mirrors, chopped my piano into kindling, stabbed and maimed the pictures on the walls, and tore the hangings into shreds. Yes, sir, that was the noble revenge they took upon me for daring to fight in defence of my native land. Ah, I must not recall those things," he added, recovering himself. "Thank God, we are a united country once more, and I don't regret my share of the loss. But I was also thinking, sir, of Jessie's mother."

The veteran leaned his head on his hand, unable to speak further. There was a quivering of the muscles in his good old, honest, disciplinarian face, that touched Lance's heart.

"I can understand what a loss that has been to you," he said, gently—"and to Miss Jessie."

The colonel raised his head again, and looked with determination at the opposite wall, mustering his self-control.

Lance resumed, with some hesitation, but impelled to speak at this precise moment, though he had not contemplated doing so. "I—I have reflected a great deal about Miss Jessie," he said.

Colonel Floyd's attention was prompt and watchful at once. He regarded the speaker with mingled friendliness and jealousy. "You are very good, my friend," said he.

The younger man smiled involuntarily. "I see no great merit in my thinking of her. I can't help it."

His host hemmed, and gave evidence, by his restless manner, of being ill at ease. "I don't know that I fully understand you," he began, moved by a conviction that he did understand with the greatest distinctness.

"Well," said Lance, "I suppose it ought to be very easy to explain myself; but I find it extremely difficult. I have thought about Miss Jessie—I wish it were possible to add in any way to her happiness."

The colonel rose. "Pray say nothing more," he begged, not unkindly, but with some reserve.

"I will say nothing, if you prefer, beyond this: that her welfare and her future cannot possibly be of greater moment to you than to me."

Lance looked at the colonel squarely until he had finished, and then he dropped his eyes. There was no mistaking the purport of his tone, which went farther than his words.

"My dear fellow," said the colonel, stretching out his hand, "from what I have seen of you I like you; I may say, I esteem you. If you have anything to say which concerns Jessie more than it does me, tell it to her."

The other accepted his hand, and pressed it. They stood thus for a moment, before parting for the night, and Lance saw that the old soldier approved of him. A strange feeling also came over him, that his host and he met not so much on the basis of a possible father-and-son relationship as on that of brotherhood. There was a community in their love for Jessie; each felt the depth of the other's devotion to her, different though it was from his own; and to Lance this mutual trust was of good omen.

Before the breakfast-hour they met again in the pleasant dining-room. The colonel was mixing a mint-julep by an open window which gave upon the garden.

"I'm not feeling quite well," he said, "and so concluded to tone myself up a little. It's a great thing to have a Virginian's grave in your garden."

"Virginian's grave" was the facetious term, as Lance had learned, applied to a bed of mint; in allusion to the theory that where a Virginia gentleman is buried the plant essential to his favorite beverage in life will spring up and multiply.

He laughingly declined to share in the refreshment, and the two said little to each other. Their talk of the night before lingered with them in the form of a slight constraint, mixed with suspense.

But Jessie put all this to flight, when she slipped into the room fresh as the morning sunbeams. She was quick to notice the white packet on the table.

"Oh, how lovely of you, pa," she exclaimed as she opened it, "to take so much trouble! Why, they're exquisite!"

She held the case up admiringly.

The colonel glanced over at their guest, a slight smile wrinkling his bronzed cheeks with fine lines like those in old engravings; and there was a trace of guiltiness in his look, as if he and Lance had been fellow conspirators.

"Don't thank me, my dear," he said. "It's Mr. Lance who was lovely."

"Oh!" cried Jessie. She fastened her eyes on Lance, with a sort of reproach; and his heart sank.

"They're beautiful, though," she continued. "Thank you so much, Mr. Lance. Then you didn't get anything for me, pa? Well, I shall have a kiss, anyway." And she ran toward him.

The old man's gray mustache appeared to revive, as he received the salute and gave one in return. "Look under your plate, child," he said, "and you'll find something, will do to give you a treat when we go up to the races at Newbern."

Jessie trotted back to her place, and the treasure under the plate proved to be a gold eagle. Another demonstration of filial fondness ensued, and they all sat down in a good humor; albeit Lance suffered a feeling of unenviable exclusion.

But in a moment or two Jessie jumped up again, and, with the earrings in her hand, went to the glass to put them on. She faced around brightly from her reflected image there, to thank Lance again. "I never dreamed of getting anything so nice," she said, frankly.

And Lance told himself that he, on the contrary, had many times dreamed of some creature as captivating as she was, but had never quite expected to find the realization. He wondered how, in this solitude and with no one to set her the example, she could have grown up into such charming womanliness.

The doors of Fairleigh Manor, excepting in the most inclement weather, stood always open—a symbol of the owner's frank and hospitable heart. And now when the breakfast was over and Jessie had betaken herself with the two gentlemen to the little morning-room across the hall, a train of darkies—men and women—presented itself at the entrance, bringing good wishes and simple gifts to their young mistress. First of all came old Sally, who folded the fair maiden in her faithful arms and covered her forehead and neck with kisses. Lance, with his abstract theories of equality and his concrete prejudices, which made equality impossible, was rather amazed at this proceeding. He did not relish the spectacle of the black face in such close proximity to the white one. Involuntarily he turned toward the colonel, expecting to find in him some support for his own displeasure; but there was a kindly light in the colonel's eye, and he looked on with approval as the servants approached, one after another, to give greeting in their several ways—the women with less effusion than was permitted to Sally, and the men with awkward bows or friendly grins that attested their speechless affection. Those who shared in this demonstration were elderly servants who had once been slaves, though they were accompanied by a few younger ones—their children, born in freedom. They all brought flowers and leaves; the fragrant yellow jessamine being a favorite form of tribute, alternating with festoons of the trailing vines found in Elbow Crook Swamp, baskets adorned with gray moss, and little ornaments of woven straw.

The colonel's face grew radiant and tender as he watched them. "Faithful creatures!" he said, in undertone to Lance. "Most of my people stayed by me when the fight was over. I told them they were free to go where they liked, that they didn't belong to me any more, and I couldn't tell whether I could give them work—much less support them. But they wouldn't go. They clung round me; and little by little we all got on our feet again. They said: 'You's been a good massa to us, and we ain't gwine to leave you now yore in trouble, Massa Cunnel.' And so we built up, together, what small prosperity there is here now. I had fed and clothed them, Lance, and spent many thousand dollars in buying them, but they did not forget everything, as many white people do. I little thought it would be my old slaves who would help me out in the hour of need—I to whom they had always looked for help. But so it was. My God, it has been worth all the cost and the suffering! We are more human than we were."

The veteran planter was deeply affected; and, as he spoke, a mist seemed to clear away from the young man's mind, and he beheld the simple ceremony that was taking place, in a transfigured light.

Here, close to his eyes, was an act in the endless changes and developments through which humanity is forever passing: the lifting up, the pulling down, the growth of new types and phases, the subsidence of old forms of life, accompanied by the survival of certain among their features.

One of the negroes, bolder than the rest, after wishing Jessie happiness all her days, said he knew it wasn't right to ask her for anything now, but if she "would only give him a little book to read in." ... The book was instantly forthcoming. Jessie went to her secretary, and took one from the slender row of volumes on its upper shelf. But at this Sally came forward again.

"Why, missy," she said softly, in Jessie's ear, where Lance's pearl was trembling, "ole Scip ain't no 'count. He war on'y coachman, you know, befo'. He didn't nevah b'long to you and the missus. But I come from yo' side de house, yo' know I does; and now yo' dun gone give him suffin', why I'd kin' o' like dat ar pink frock what you mos' got fru wearin'. 'Tain't good nuff for yo', nohow, missy, and ole Sally she'd be mighty glad on't, ef you don' want it no mo'."

So Jessie laughed, and sent Sally up-stairs to get the garment of her desire; and from that moment on the reception was metamorphosed into an exchange of gifts.

The darkies brought in their vines and clusters, and laid them on the table or draped them with primitive art about the room, until it became a sort of bower, verdant and perfumed with their offerings; and Jessie sat there like an unaffected little queen, distributing tokens to this and that adherent. She knew their humble demands were not prompted by greed, but that they simply loved the old custom of receiving something from their mistress, and could not give it up even though times were so greatly changed.

Lance had now fully entered into the spirit of the scene, and the fancy struck him that it was a repetition of the old story of savages on the New World shores worshipping the first white person who came among them.

What if these negroes had been the aborigines, and his Jessie—or Miss Jessie, rather—had been that Gertrude Wylde whom tradition told of, receiving their homage? The idle query of imagination, thus propounded, brought up to him with renewed force the vision, still unexplained, which had crossed his path on the sea-shore.