The old man looked at her, with worry on his face. "Didn't you tell me 't was as good as settled? You said you were dead sure he meant to make you his wife."
She was still petulant, blaming him for Layson's unexpected lack of warmth. "Yes, but you needn't have interfered!"
Holton was intensely puzzled, worried, almost frightened. He was as anxious to have this young man for a son-in-law as his daughter was to have him for a husband. Her marriage into such a celebrated bluegrass family as the Laysons were, would firmly fix her social status, no matter how precarious it might be now, and the match would be of great advantage to him in a business way, as well. He stood there, thinking deeply, very much displeased.
"There's somethin' more nor me has come between you," he said finally, his face flushing with a deep resentment. "I tell you, gal, what I believed at first, deep in my heart, air true. He was only triflin' with you. Them aristocrats down in the bluegrass don't hold us no better than the dust beneath their feet, even if we have got money. It's family that counts with them. Didn't he lay his whip acrost my face, once, as if I was a nigger?" His wrath was rising. "And now he shows that he was only triflin' with you with no real intentions of doin' as we thought he would!" The man was tremulous with wrath. "Oh, I'll be even with him!"
Barbara was greatly worried by the situation. All her life, despite the fact that she was beautiful, despite the fact that her father was a rich man—richer, by a dozen times, than many of the people for whose friendship she longed vainly—she had vaguely felt that there was an invisible gulf between her and the girls with whom she came in contact at the exclusive schools to which she had been sent, between her and the gentlefolk with whom, in some measure, she had mixed since she had left school-walls. "Father," she asked anxiously, "why do people look down on us so?"
He faced her with a worried look, as if he feared that she might guess at something which he wished should remain hidden. "They say I made my money tradin' in niggers," he replied, at length. "Well, what of it? Didn't I have the right?"
"Are you sure there's nothing else?"
He seemed definitely startled. "Girl, what makes you ask?"
"Because sometimes memories come to me."
"Memories of what?"