"She won't be here for some time yet. Bear with me a little, Margaret, don't be so impatient of the few minutes I have secured with you; what we're deciding now is important—your whole future."
"It is already decided."
He dashed his hand down upon his knee. "There's no use trying to argue with women! A woman never comprehends argument, no matter how strong it may be."
She was silent. Her face had a weary look, but there were in it no indications of yielding.
"You appear to be determined to go," he began again; "if you do go, Aunt Katrina will have the mental exercise of learning to get on without either of us."
She looked up quickly; his eyes were turned away now, straying over the tangled foliage of the crape-myrtles.
"I am sick of everything here," he went on—"East Angels, Gracias, the whole of it. If you are tired of seeing the same few people always day after day, what must I be? There are two spinster cousins of Aunt Katrina's who might come down here for a while, and I dare say they would come if I should ask them; with these ladies to manage the house, with Dr. Reginald and Betty, Celestine and Looth, Aunt Katrina ought to be tolerably comfortable."
Margaret had listened with keen attention. But she did not answer immediately; when she did reply, she spoke quietly. "Yes, I should think you would be glad to go north again, you have been tied down here so long. I am sure we can assume now that there is at least no present danger in Aunt Katrina's case; both of us certainly are not needed for her, and therefore, as you did not speak of going, I thought I could. But now that you have spoken, now that I see you do wish to go, I feel differently, I give you the chance. The change I wished for I will create here, I will create it by buying this house from you—that will be a change; I can amuse myself restoring it, if one can say that, when it's not a church."
"You would do that?" said Winthrop, eagerly. Then he colored. "I see; it means that you will stay if I go!"
"I shall do very well here if I have the place to think about," she went on, "I shall have the land cultivated; perhaps I shall start a new orange grove. Of course I shall lose money; but I can employ the negroes about here, and I should like that; as to the household arrangements, Aunt Katrina would be staying with me, not I with her; that would make everything different."