Audrey

Haward ceased to speak for his father, and sighed for himself. "Moral:

Three-and-thirty must be wiser in his day and generation." He rose from

his chair, and began to walk the room. "If not Cophetua, what then,--what

then?" Passing the table, he took up the miniature again. "The villain of

the piece, I suppose, Evelyn?" he asked.

The pure and pensive face seemed to answer him. He put the picture hastily

down, and recommenced his pacing to and fro. From the garden below came

the heavy odor of lilies, and the whisper of the river tried the nerves.

Haward went to the window, and, leaning out, looked, as now each night he

looked, up and across the creek toward the minister's house. To-night

there was no light to mark it; it was late, and all the world without his

room was in darkness. He sat down in the window seat, looked out upon the

stars and listened to the river. An hour had passed before he turned back

to the room, where the candles had burned low. "I will go to Westover

to-morrow," he said. "God knows, I should be a villain"-He locked the picture of Evelyn within his desk, drank his wine and water,

and went to bed, strongly resolved upon retreat. In the morning he said,

"I will go to Westover this afternoon;" and in the afternoon he said, "I

will go to-morrow." When the morrow came, he found that the house lacked

but one day of being finished, and that there was therefore no need for

him to go at all.

Mistress Deborah was loath, enough to take leave of damask and mirrors and

ornaments of china,--the latter fine enough and curious enough to remind

her of Lady Squander's own drawing-room; but the leaf of paper which

Haward wrote upon, tore from his pocket-book, and gave her provided

consolation. Her thanks were very glib, her curtsy was very deep. She was

his most obliged, humble servant, and if she could serve him again he

would make her proud. Would he not, now, some day, row up creek to their

poor house, and taste of her perry and Shrewsbury cakes? Audrey, standing

by, raised her eyes, and made of the request a royal invitation.

For a week or more Haward abode upon his plantation, alone save for his

servants and slaves. Each day he sent for the overseer, and listened

gravely while that worthy expounded to him all the details of the

condition and conduct of the estate; in the early morning and the late

afternoon he rode abroad through his fields and forests. Mill and ferry

and rolling house were visited, and the quarters made his acquaintance. At

the creek quarter and the distant ridge quarter were bestowed the newly

bought, the sullen and the refractory of his chattels. When, after sunset,

and the fields were silent, he rode past the cabins, coal-black figures,

new from the slave deck, still seamed at wrist and ankle, mowed and

jabbered at him from over their bowls of steaming food; others, who had

forgotten the jungle and the slaver, answered, when he spoke to them, in

strange English; others, born in Virginia, and remembering when he used to

ride that way with his father, laughed, called him "Marse Duke," and

agreed with him that the crop was looking mighty well. With the dark he

reached the great house, and negroes from the home quarter took--his

horse, while Juba lighted him through the echoing hall into the lonely

rooms.