It was a beautiful morning of early October in the mountain region of Virginia. The old Fitzhugh homestead, now the property of an Englishman who had married the only daughter of the impoverished family and bought in the home from creditors with good British gold, reared its dull red sides from amid a mass of sugar maples, larches and sycamore trees, and seemed with its widely opened doors, to proclaim an endless hospitality. The passer-by caught a glimpse of rambling out-houses whose chimneys shed lazy wreaths of smoke from pine wood fires, and if near enough he might have sniffed the pleasant odor of savory cookery from the rear building where Aunt Rose, the old-time cook, exercised her skill to please her epicure master, or tempt the less robust appetite of her young mistress.

Mrs. Meeks stood at this moment in the middle of the sitting-room, her arms clasped over a broom, and her dark eyes gazing upon the floor in front of her. But her meditations had nothing to do with the rug where the broom rested, nor yet with the sun-lit slope of the Blue Ridges that extended in all their wealth of autumn beauty in front of the open windows.

She was thinking of Mr. Meeks. He had just left the house, and as not infrequently happened, had left the sting of sharp words behind him. Yet, not exactly sharp, either. Overbearing, dogmatical words, not intentionally cutting ones, for that was not the nature of the man; but words that, said in his tone of command, bore heavily upon sensitive feelings.

Mrs. Meeks was sensitive. That was evident in every line of her softly rounded face, but the red lips that were curved in Cupid's bow could straighten and stiffen when she was roused into one of her rare moods of determination. Mr. Meeks called these moods "tantrums," although his wife always spoke low and never lost her good manners. She had been reared by a grandmother who was one of the last of the Southern dames of the ancien rÉgime, and would have died before she would have condescended to a rough and vulgar quarrel.

It was the opposite trait in Mr. Meeks that hurt her. He was inclined to quarrel on slight occasion. He had not the least idea of his defect of temper; it was always clear to him that he was in the right, and people who differed from him were wrong. They quarreled with him. If people would do what they were told, he would never have cause to get out of humor. This lordliness of tone did not set ill on a man presiding at town meetings, and explaining to badly informed clients the intricacies of law. In these cases, suavity and a fine, melodious voice were the decent coverings of an egotism that wore less disguise when he was laying down the law to the little woman at home.

It had been only an agreeable sort of masterfulness in the courting days. Then it had seemed to the romantic girl that yielding her will to a tender, protecting lover gave to their relation a delightful exclusiveness, as contrasted with other relations. But in three years she had learned that what from one point of view is agreeable authority, becomes from another point of view distasteful restraint. Besides, the fiber of the American woman which yields sweetly to suggestions of warmer wraps and the reserving of dances, is less compliant under complaints of neglected hose or bad management of fuel.

Still, one could conceive of a demeanor that would have deprived even such fault-finding of its sting. But the most tender wifely forbearance will bristle with resentment when such a slight matter as a wrongly folded white tie calls forth allusions to a blissful and ante-marital condition in which hired landladies were attentive to a man's comfort; and above all, when ill-humor allows itself the parting shot from the doorway of a muttered "darned fool."

Mrs. Meeks had watched her stout, well-set-up husband drive away behind his handsome bay horses to his office in town, and then fallen into an unpleasant fit of meditation over her morning task of putting the sitting-room in order.

The suggestion of Cupid's bow had entirely disappeared by the time she had mentally reviewed the whole situation, and her mouth was, as the old black servant secretly observed as she entered, "set for a fight."

"Ef ever Mis' Linda gits her back up onc't, that air Englishman better look out for hisse'f," old Rose had confided to a confidential friend. "I knows the Fitzhugh blood. It won't bear much puttin' upon, now I tells you."

The old family servant was not particularly fond of her Mis' Linda's husband, and she looked forward to that crisis when the Fitzhugh blood would become heated.

"Laws, honey," she made bold to say as she came forward and took the broom into her hard, muscular hands, "you go and set down. You's got no call to worry yo'se'f no-how 'bout housewuk."

"But you have enough to do already, Rose," said Mrs. Meeks kindly, and turning her eyes, in which tears glistened, away from the withered, kindly old face. She dared not meet the look of sympathy, being in that humor when even a dignified woman may be melted into indiscreet confidences under the temptation of a silent, intelligent championship.

Old Rose, however, began to sweep with those deft, smooth strokes that raise no dust, and with her head bent, she talked along in a seemingly purposeless fashion.

"I's an ole coon, Mis' Linda; a little extry wuk ain't goin' to hurt me none. You take keer yo'se'f, honey, an' don' wuk yo' good looks away. An' don' fret 'em away, neither. You mus'n't wu'y yo'se'f, chile. Never was er man wuth wu'yin' over. Ain't I had three husbands? De good Laud, He tuk Jim an' Abraham, an' den I, like a fool, tuk up wid Josh. An' he drunk an' drunk, an' den he cusses an' swear at me, an' me wu'kin' myse'f like er ole hoss, and den I jes gets up an' I say, 'Josh, I don' 'low no nigger ter cuss at me!' I says, 'You kin hev de inside of dis house an' I'll tek de outside,' and so I comes back ter de ole place, an' what Josh do? Why, Josh, he sober up, an' he 'gins ter see den w'at comes o' ugliness, an' he follow a'ter me, an' heah he is, gard'nin' fur Mr. Meeks. But when he comes home ter de shanty he don' cuss at me no mo'. Bes' way is jes ter let dese men know dere place, honey, once an' fur all."

After old Rose had gone out with the dust-pan, Mrs. Meeks sat still in the rocking chair by the window, from which she could see quite a distance down the road; but her vision was turned too intensely inward to admit of her taking any interest in the few passers-by.

Strange how a single sentence coming at the right time, will have a force that tons of inopportune advice has not. "Bes' way is jes ter let dese men know dere place, honey, once an' fur all." The sage, worldly-wise policy of this ignorant colored woman, to whom mother-wit had suggested methods culture could scarcely have rendered more effective, struck a chord in the heart of her mistress that would have failed to vibrate at any other moment. When causes of irritation are not present, one is simply amused in listening to recitals that piquantly set forth the temper of the subject, but when the mind is oppressed by a sense of long-smothered injuries, it turns a very different aspect toward experiences that appear similar to its own.

Mrs. Meeks would not have deliberately made herself, or permitted any one else to make comparisons between her husband and Uncle Josh, whose outward uncouthness removed him leagues distant from his master. Yet, with that gentleman's last muttered expression smarting in her ears, she quailed at the suggestion of a spiritual likeness between the two beings in their antipodal tweed and jeans. Floating in upon her disturbed mind came a certain rude epigram which she had heard in the kitchen years ago when, a tiny girl, she was playing about the door, and had remembered because it struck her as being funny: "All men's tar off de same stick."

"True!" said Mrs. Meeks bitterly, the tears falling now without disguise. "Men are all alike. I thought Robert was different. And our life together was to be a heaven upon earth? Well, this is the end of it all. I cannot stand his temper—I will not stand it!"

How far her resentful musings would have extended if she had been left a while longer in that worst of solitudes, the loneliness of affronted dignity, is uncertain, for her tears were suddenly checked by sounds of visitors. A keen-eyed, vivacious, middle-aged woman alighted at the door from an open carriage and made her way in without ceremony. Mrs. Meeks started up with intent to escape, but settled back in her chair again as her visitor entered with the little whirl and rush that characterizes the movements of a lively, excitable woman.

Her sharp black eyes took in the situation at a glance; the half-arranged room, Mrs. Meek's dishabille, her despondent attitude and the traces of tears. She advanced quickly and put out both hands, exclaiming in a voice of mingled affection and curiosity:

"Linda, what is the matter?"

"Oh, Louise, for once I am sorry to see you!"

These two women were lifelong friends; friends in the sense in which Virginians understand the term, their relations being of the sort that involves the frankest self-disclosure, and an immediate discussion of every important circumstance entering into their experience.

"Now, my dear," said Louise Gourlay, in a husky, emphatic voice, which to her torment she could never soften, "Providence sent me here this morning. I think too much of you not to understand at once what ails you. Mr. Meeks has been abusing you!"

Mrs. Meeks blushed and tried to look indignant, but only succeeded in looking unhappy.

"There is no use in talking about it," she said, bracing herself to encounter opposition. "Some things ought not to be talked about. It cannot help any. I can't go back and be a girl again." There was a slight pause and a struggle after control, and then she broke out with a sob: "Oh, Louise, why did I marry?"

"The good Lord only knows why any of us marry," answered the older woman, raising her eyes devoutly. "But I suppose the world has to be carried on some way. It isn't so much the marrying, after all, that's the trouble, as the foolishness afterward. Now, dear, you remember that I prophesied long ago that Mr. Meeks would tyrannize over you hand and foot, if you let him. A man can't help trying to rule the roost—mercy, what's all that row about?"

She broke off suddenly and got up to look out of the window as sounds of a great commotion in the garden turned the peaceful scene without into one of those miniature pandemoniums not uncommon in the country, where a flock of hens follow a Robin Hood of a spouse in his raids upon forbidden territory.

Robin Hood in this case was a superb black Spanish cock with large powers of leadership, and he had succeeded in marshaling his entire female troop into the geranium patch before Uncle Josh, soberly hoeing corn in the rear, was made aware of the invasion.

He ambled forward, waving his hat and shouting. Aunt Rose ran out, waving her apron, and the daring Robin Hood, making as much noise as both of them, strode back and forth, protecting while at the same time vigorously protesting against the retreat of his flock.

"Mercy on us!" ejaculated Mrs. Gourlay, "the hens are trampling over your yellow chrysanthemums, Linda."

Confidences can wait, but the peril of a cherished flower-bed is not lightly to be set aside. Mrs. Meeks was stung into renewed interest in the life she had been upon the point of denouncing as utterly devoid of satisfaction. It was impossible to sit still and watch those lazy, awkward negroes vainly trying to head off the stout-hearted rooster. She went out, at first with rather a contemptuous, indifferent air, but, as the cause of provocation scuttled toward her she suddenly felt her indefinite sense of wrong against a sex at large become concentrated into fury toward this small masculine specimen, and entered into the chase with an ardor that soon routed him from the field.

She entered the house half laughing, half frowning at the two darkies, who had rather enjoyed the little excitement.

"Aunt Rose, you are as bad as a child, standing giggling there! You had better be making some little cakes for lunch. Miss Louise will stay."

"Laws, Mis' Linda, I couldn't he'p myse'f. Dat rooster, he de wuss sp'iled fowl I ebber see. He oughter be clapped inter de pot. He got a heap o' sense, too, but he done sp'iled tell he jes rotten." Thus Rose, as she sauntered back to her kitchen, to look up eggs and sugar for her cakes. Meanwhile, Mrs. Gourlay was saying:

"No, Linda, I can't stay to-day. You drive back with me and stay all night. It's an age since you spent the night at my house. Come, it will do Mr. Meeks good to show him you feel a proper resentment. It's high time you took a stand."

"Stay all night?" said Linda slowly. She felt that the significance of the act would be greater to her husband than her adviser was aware. It would be dropping the old life, putting a check upon all the sweet, confidential relations that were so dear to both, and starting out in a new, untried path of independence, of separateness that might end in complete alienation. She was a reasoning woman, used to foreseeing consequences. Sometimes she was impatient of the sound logical faculty that held her impulsive disposition in check, and longed to plunge headlong into some kind of folly, as a child bound over by a promise not to meddle with sweets, has spasms of temptation which even the certainty of illness and castor oil are hardly sufficient to restrain.

She got up and walked slowly toward the door that opened into her own and her husband's room. It was a spacious chamber, capable of holding the belongings of two persons, and before its wide-open fireplace filled with small logs ready for lighting, was drawn a great easy-chair, in which he loved to recline in the evenings with her on a cushion at his feet, while they watched the blaze together. A slight, nervous shudder passed over Linda as her dress brushed against the chair on her way to the closet where her numerous hats were arranged in their boxes. Mr. Meeks liked to see his pretty wife well dressed, and no woman in the county had such an abundance of fine clothes. She took down a fawn-colored wool gown and went to the dressing-case to fasten it before the glass. A serious, tremulous face looked back at her, a face made for sweet looks, for happiness, but now shadowed by the most miserable feelings a woman can have, for "to be wroth with one we love doth work like madness in the brain."

There, hanging on its pretty stand, was her jeweled watch, his wedding gift to her. Shining on the pin cushion were brooches and little trinkets, every one of which marked some pleasant episode. A vase of her favorite late white roses gathered by his hands only the evening before, breathed reproachful sweetness as she hastily bent over them.

But Linda was a proud woman as well as a tender one. The Fitzhugh spirit had been chafed beyond endurance; it could bear the hurts of privation, of grief, ruin and all sufferings inflicted by evil circumstances; it could not submit to insult. So she named the roughness of the man whose one great fault had to-day come to outweigh in her mind innumerable virtues. She called old Rose, gave a few orders in a tone that warned the servant to preserve silence in the midst of surprise, and then, beside her friend who kept up a cheerful flow of talk, moved tall and stately toward the carriage, and gazed dry-eyed, but ah, how sadly, at the fine old red brick dwelling half-covered with Virginia creeper and clematis, till a turn of the road swept it out of sight.

The strong black horses pranced merrily along the road, which now on one side lay beneath the mountain, covered with the red, yellow and brown masses of forestry that in the autumn glorify the earth, and in daily bleeding beauty divert a gazer's thoughts from the cruel frosts of night. To the left a deep gorge, rocky and dangerous, swept to the river below. Two vehicles, coming in opposite directions, could barely pass each other, and the driver who had the inside track might well bless his luck. But secure in the skill of their black Jehu, the two women gave no single thought to danger, but kept up their conversation indefatigably. John, keen and alert, pulled up his team carefully as he heard the tramp of a horseman rapidly approaching.

The horseman also slowed up, and when alongside stopped entirely, to exchange greetings. He was elderly and distinguished-looking, despite his shabby, dust-covered clothing and carelessly-cropped hair and beard. His worn, melancholy face brightened as he swept off his hat and made careful inquiries after the ladies' health. Then he cantered on and the inmates of the carriage leaned back again.

"Poor Colonel Thomas!" commented Mrs. Gourlay. "I recollect when he was the first young man in the county. He has gone all to pieces in the last year. He was rather high once, but Amanda was too much for him. Sam calls her 'Petruchio in petticoats.'"

Her tones smote her listener's ear as sounds coming from afar. Poor Colonel Thomas! Had he ever been in love with that sharp-tongued woman? How terrible for a woman to have upon her conscience the wreck of a man's life. If Robert should ever come to wear that bowed look—if instead of the proud confidence that well became his comely Saxon features, he should show in sunken eyes and fitful flush the marks of that ill remedy that promises but never brings "surcease of sorrow...." But he was too strong, too sane; misery could never drive him to dissipation, although it might drive him to desperation of another sort. Her quick fancy began to picture Robert estranged from the woman he loved. Mentally she saw him growing cold, gloomy and reserved—their intimacy gone as if it had never been, and they two, bound by unbreakable ties, aging in sight of each other, their lives dragging on in a way that might come to end in mutual aversion and disgust. She knew that Robert would construe her going away to-day, after their cold parting, into a determination to assert herself against him, and still worse, to seek abroad sympathy for that which she was bound as a loving wife to bear in silence and to forget.

The proud Fitzhugh blood flamed in her cheeks and her head flung up unconsciously. But at the same instant there came into her mind, as a bugle note sounds amid the horrid discord of battle, a sentence Robert had uttered to her once in the early days of their love, when he had inadvertently offended her by a careless remark: "A man is not to be judged by one word, but by all the acts of his life."

And as if in her mental struggle she had been seeking some maxim as a guide, she fastened upon this and repeated it over and over to herself.

All this time she had been mechanically giving outward attention to Mrs. Gourlay, although that shrewd woman, comprehending her absent glance, made small exactions upon her for reply. But seeing a sudden brightness take the place of her friend's dull gaze, she gave her talk more point.

"Sam is home, my dear. He came yesterday, and he says he means to pay us an old-fashioned visit. I hope the weather will keep fine so we can have some dancing picnics. He declares they are better fun than anything in Philadelphia."

"Yes, I always liked them—when I was a girl."

"What are you now, an aged woman? Nonsense, you are even prettier than you used to be when Sam spent his days on the road between our place and your father's. Ah, child, you treated Sam badly. He never got over your marriage, poor fellow. I don't know how he will bear meeting you to-day, without any preparation. But men's hearts bend, they never break; that's one comfort. Still, perhaps you'd best not flirt too hard with him."

Linda started and looked squarely at her friend. She knew that in the code of the Virginia matron, herself holding her girlhood's coquetries in dear remembrance, such meetings between old flames and mild renewals of former admiration were perfectly harmless and natural. But her husband would think differently. He might believe this meeting pre-meditated on her part; believe that she sought diversion of a dangerous and a doubtful nature. For she knew well, and he had guessed, that Sam Hilton's courtship of her had been no idle pastime, and that the young Southerner bore the Englishman a grudge which would make him a swift partisan if there once entered his head the slightest suspicion that she had reason to complain of the treatment she received.

Had she? Her husband was in general goodness itself, all indulgence and kindness except when wrought upon by outer irritating quality, or annoyed at carelessness in herself. For she was forgetful—not wantonly careless, but lacking in that perfect method his good taste demanded. He was arbitrary—yes—still, some of the blame was hers, and if they had differences it was her place to give in. So the wife told herself in the quick interval between Mrs. Gourlay's last remark, and the turning of the carriage into the east fork of the road that marked half the distance between the two residences.

"Louise," she said in an imperative undertone, "tell John to turn back and take me home. I must go back this minute. If you think anything of me," she added hastily, interposing against remonstrance, "do as I ask."

"Now, Linda, listen to reason. If you've made up your mind to go back and eat humble-pie—excuse the truth—at least wait till after dinner and Sam shall drive you back. It would be absurd to turn back now."

"Louise—you don't understand my feeling. I was wrong to come. Robert was to come home early this evening and bring an old friend just from England with him to stay a few days. Think how mortifying to find me gone away!"

"It would look badly. Still—serve him right!"

"No, I was cross myself this morning—probably. I didn't mean to tell you of our quarrel—our half quarrel. But never mind talking about it, only, please take me back. Or else let me walk? I can walk; it's not far."

"Linda Fitzhugh! Well, then—John, Mrs. Meeks has forgotten an important engagement and we must take her straight home again. Can you turn the carriage here?"

"Reckon I kin, m'm," said John sulkily, and the horses were turned about.

Mrs. Gourlay glanced at her watch and said resignedly:

"It will be half-past one by the time I am back, and the children will be savage, for I promised them I wouldn't stay long this morning. But you always have your own way with me, Linda. I wish you were half as spunky with somebody else."

"Don't, dearest," Linda entreated, the color rising in her cheeks.

"I will say it. If you keep on giving in this way to a man's temper, you'll end by not daring to say your soul's your own."

"Robert is imperious, perhaps," the young wife answered slowly. "But that is between him and me. If I can stand it, my friends needn't worry."

"My dear child, you know I don't mean to be meddlesome. I might have recollected the old adage about a husband and wife being a pair of scissors, and whatever comes between the blades gets cut. But there is a principle involved here."

"Yes," assented Linda, "there is a principle involved."

"I suppose you mean your principles and mine are not the same," said the elder woman, with a little heat.

"Oh, yours are all right for you. But I must conform myself to a different rule. I can't explain it all, dear, only, right or wrong, I shall continue to give in—as you term it—to Robert. If he is high-tempered, there's all the more reason why I shouldn't be. I know what he expects of me—what he has always expected of me——"

"Expects you to be an angel!" broke in her friend, "while he is—whatever he chooses."

"Well," answered Linda, with a brilliant smile, "I'll be as near an angel as I can. You don't understand. There are compensations. Even if there is a little bitter drop now and then, he makes me very happy. And happiness is worth an effort."

"Well, well," sighed her friend, and they both fell into silence.

At the porch they parted with a warmer kiss than usual. Linda could not help feeling that she had cast herself adrift to swim alone henceforth in waters that might be cold and sullen. She went into the house and took off her hat half reluctantly. The next few hours dragged on in unbroken dulness. About four o'clock the bay horses dashed up and Mr. Meeks alighted from his buggy, followed by a fine-looking, gray-haired man who was in the midst of remarks evidently admiring and complimentary in their nature.

Mrs. Meeks stood upon the veranda, her eyes a trifle brighter than usual, her cheeks a trifle warmer; her head was held unconsciously a little high, but otherwise there was no criticism to be made upon the gracious sweetness with which she greeted her husband and his guest.

"I was in a measure prepared to meet you," said the suave Briton. "Meeks has been treating me to certain rhapsodies of description with which I now perfectly sympathize."

"In Virginia we say that an acquaintance begun with a compliment ends in a duel," said Linda, smiling.

When the guest had been ushered upstairs to wash off the dust of travel, Mr. Meeks put his arm about his wife's waist. His eyes were unshadowed by any disagreeable recollections.

"Sweetheart!" he said.

"He will never make any apologies," thought Linda. "Well, no matter. I am glad I came back."