"You meant for the best, Aunt Dora," she murmured. "All that you said is true—as true now as then."
"But, oh, child, money makes such a difference—opportunity, travel, splendid environment. The incompatibility I feared, the bizarre influences of his past life, his language, his opinions, his manners, his lack of education would all be condoned by the world in a man of great wealth. And, even without it, you loved him." After a pause, "Lucia," Mrs. Laniston pleaded tremulously, "can't you try to lure him back. It would do no harm to try."
"I will not," cried Lucia with sudden passion. "I would not—for all his fortune—have him to think that it made the difference to me."
Mrs. Laniston could not herself have attained such dignity of poise, but she had a dreary satisfaction that Lloyd could perceive no suggestion of change in Lucia's manner wrought by the revelations of the magnitude of his windfall, no token of relenting in the scanty association that remained to them during the journey and the final parting.
His detention in Colbury was slight. In that short dazzled bewildered moment when he had looked down upon the still in the cave he had not recognised any face or figure among the distillers. No facts could be adduced against the Pinnott family in connection with the moonshining evidently practised in the cavern, and he was not sorry that they should go scot free despite his suspicions. Clotilda had obviously lost little in losing her lover, but it was because of this he thought that she seemed dazed and dull and dense to him when he told her of his windfall and bestowed upon her and the old crone and Daniel Pinnott's wife and child such gratuities "to remember him by" as he fancied might please their taste. Then he was gone and she heard of him never again.
Mrs. Laniston did not lose sight of him. She was wont to scan with pangs of self-reproach the reports of the social world in the newspapers, and bitterly noted the fulfilment of her prophecy how easily it might reconcile itself to peculiar antecedents and endowments when the wealth was commensurate—and in justification of this mundane appraisement it might be urged that the prestige of family distinction was great also. In the shortest imaginable interval Lloyd became noted in the social whirl; he was a patron of the theatre and the fine arts; a great devotee to outdoor sports, master of the fox-hounds, prominent in the country club and at the horse show, and he soon grew interested in the turf as an owner of fine racers. His attractive personality, and his inherited claims to fine social position speedily made him a favourite in certain high and exclusive circles. He became, so to speak, the fashion; his traits were admired and imitated; his sayings were repeated; his every movement was chronicled; and when it became bruited abroad before many months that he was about to marry his cousin's only child, Miss Geraldine Lloyd, his popularity rendered it a matter of very general satisfaction that the great Jennico fortune, which had been divided in his behalf, was once more to become a single interest to his further advantage.
When this news came to Louisiana Lucia Laniston was moved to take her way in a solitary walk down toward his little neglected plantation which she knew lay beyond the bight of the bayou near the swamp. The narrow path kept the summit of the levee along the Mississippi River, the great embankment covered with the thick mat of the Bermuda grass,—the still, deserted plantation fields on one side, the crisp sere stalks flaunting here and there a flocculent lock, "dog-tail" as the ungathered remnant of the cotton is called, and on the other side shining pools, where the encroaching river was creeping up into the area of the "no man's land" between the protective levee and the treacherous current. A lonely region this; she met no living creature, and as she, herself, swiftly walked along the embankment, her tall slim figure in her gray cloth dress with her gray chinchilla furs—the only note of vivid colour being the red wing with the grey ostrich plume in her hat—might have been visible a long way off, had there been any observer in view. When she quitted this path she followed the quiet country road, along its many windings to Lloyd's little plantation, a pilgrimage of final farewell to a cherished thought, and stood at the padlocked gate, and looked long at the little humble unpainted house, which was without a tenant now. The soft bland air of the Southern winter was about her; the sheen of the sunlight had a glister like spring; the eternal green of the hedges of the Cherokee rose and the never-dying foliage of the live oak above the roof aided the illusion. She had never regretted his millions, but looking over the gate locked against her, she saw herself as once heretofore rocking in her chair on the porch of his house, and again, with blowsy hair and red cheeks, planting lily bulbs in the high turfed flower beds of fantastic shape, and she knew that she had had then as now a vision of happiness.
So definitely was Lloyd present to her thoughts that as she turned and saw him standing on the border of Bermuda grass that fringed the road, she did not start with an appreciation of the reality of the apparition,—it affected her only as the continuity of her dream. It was indeed the surprise in his face, the embarrassment of his manner, the searching questioning look beginning to grow intent in his eyes as he lifted his hat that brought her suddenly to the recognition of the facts of the moment.
"You are not surprised to see me here," he said, ill at ease, flushing, consciously malapropos,—it was as if presumptuously recognising the fact that he must have been predominant in her mind at the moment.
"I was thinking of you." She regained her self-possession by a mighty effort, as she offered her hand. "We have heard the news. I am glad to have an early opportunity to congratulate you."