Audrey

Her hand went again to her forehead, then dropped at her side. A look of

fear and of piteous appeal came into her face. "The witch said that I

dreamed, and that it was not well for dreamers to awaken." Suddenly the

quiet of her voice and bearing was broken. With a cry, she hurried across

the room, and, kneeling, caught at the other's gown. "Ah! that is no

dream, is it? No dream that he is my friend, only my friend who has always

been sorry for me, has always helped me! He is the noblest gentleman, the

truest, the best--he loves the lady at Westover--they are to be

married--he never knew what people were saying--he was not himself when he

spoke to me so last night"--Her eyes appealed to the face above her. "I

could never have dreamed all this," she said. "Tell me that I was awake!"

The minister's wife looked down upon her with a bitter smile. "So you've

had your fool's paradise? Well, once I had mine, though 'twas not your

kind. 'Tis a pretty country, Audrey, but it's not long before they turn

you out." She laughed somewhat drearily, then in a moment turned shrew

again. "He never knew what people were saying?" she cried. "You little

fool, do you suppose he cared? 'Twas you that played your cards all wrong

with your Governor's ball last night!--setting up for a lady,

forsooth!--bringing all the town about your ears! You might have known

that he would never have taken you there in his senses. At Fair View

things went very well. He was entertained,--and I meant to see that no

harm came of it,--and Darden got his support in the vestry. For he was

bit,--there's no doubt of that,--though what he ever saw in you more than

big eyes and a brown skin, the Lord knows, not I! Only your friend!--a

fine gentleman just from London, with a whole Canterbury book of stories

about his life there, to spend a'most a summer on the road between his

plantation and a wretched glebe house because he was only your friend, and

had saved you from the Indians when you were a child, and wished to be

kind to you still! I'll tell you who did wish to be kind to you, and that

was Jean Hugon, the trader, who wanted to marry you."

Audrey rose to her feet, and moved slowly backward to the wall. Mistress

Deborah went shrilly on: "I dare swear you believe that Mr. Haward had you

in mind all the years he was gone from Virginia? Well, he didn't. He puts

you with Darden and me, and he says, 'There's the strip of Oronoko down by

the swamp,--I 've told my agent that you're to have from it so many pounds

a year;' and he sails away to London and all the fine things there, and

never thinks of you more until he comes back to Virginia and sees you last

May Day at Jamestown. Next morning he comes riding to the glebe house.

'And so,' he says to Darden, 'and so my little maid that I brought for

trophy out of the Appalachian Mountains is a woman grown? Faith, I'd quite

forgot the child; but Saunderson tells me that you have not forgot to draw

upon my Oronoko.' That's all the remembrance you were held in, Audrey."