The Heart

Thus we rode homeward, and presently came in sight of the Cavendish

tobacco-fields overlapped with the fresh green of young leaves like

the bosses of a shield, and on the right waved rosy garlands of the

locust grove, and such a wonderful strong sweetness of honey came

from it that we seemed to breast it like a wave, and caught our

breaths, and there was a mighty hum of bees like a hundred

spinning-wheels. But Mistress Mary and I regarded mostly that green

stretch of tobacco, and each of us had our thoughts, and presently

out came hers--"Master Wingfield, I pray you, whose tobacco may

that be?" she inquired in a sudden, fierce fashion.

"Madam Cavendish's and yours and your sister's," said I.

"Nay," said she, "'tis the king's." Then she tossed her head again

and rode on, and said not another word, nor I, but I knew well what

she meant. Since the Navigation Act, it was, indeed, small profit

any one had of his own tobacco, since it all went into the exchequer

of the king, and I did not gainsay her.

When we had passed the negro huts, swarming with black babies

shining in the sun as sleek as mahogany, and all turning toward us

with a marvellous flashing of white eyeballs and opening of red

mouths of smiles, all at once, like some garden bed of black

flowers, at the sight of our gay advance, we reached the great

house, and Mistress Catherine stood in the door clad in a green

satin gown which caught the light with smooth shimmers like the

green sheath of a marsh lily.

Her bare, slender arms were clasped before her, and her long, white

neck was bent into an arch of watchful grace. Her face was the

gravest I ever saw on maid, and not to be reconciled with my first

acquaintance with her, thereby giving me always a slight doubt as of

a mask, but her every feature was as clear and fine as ivory, and

her head proudly crowned with great wealth of hair. Catherine

Cavendish was esteemed a great beauty, by both men and women, which

shows, perchance, that her beauty availed her little in some ways,

else it had not been so freely admitted by her own sex. However that

may be, Catherine Cavendish had had few lovers as compared with many

a maid less fair and less dowered, and at this time she seemed to

have settled into an expectation and contentment of singleness.

She stood looking at her sister and me as we rode toward her, and

the sun was full on her face, which had the cool glimmer of a pearl

in the golden light, and her wide-open eyes never wavered. As she

stood there she might have been the portrait of herself, such a look

had she of unchanging quiet, and the wonder and incredulity which

always seized me at the sight of her to reconcile what I knew with

what she seemed, was strong upon me.