He put the stem of his pipe between his teeth and hung on it desperately for a moment; then he took it out again.
"He's a fine young fellow," he said at last. "I don't know a finer—and, bless my soul! I'd see you married to him to-morrow."
But Eugenia laughed and beat his shoulder.
"You don't want to see me married to anybody," she said, "and you know it."
At the end of the ensuing week Dudley came to Kingsborough, and upon the first evening of his visit he walked out to Battle Hall. He was looking smooth and well groomed, and the mass of his thick dark hair waving over his white brow gave him an air of earnestness and ardour. Eugenia wondered that she had never noticed before that he was like the portrait of an old-time orator, and that his hands were finely rounded.
His voice, with its suggestion of suavity, fell soothingly on her nerves. She had never liked him so much, and she had never shown it so plainly. Once as she met his genial gaze she held her breath at the marvel that he should grow to love her, and in vain. Was it that beside his splendid shallows the more luminous depths of Nicholas's nature still showed supreme? Or was it a question of fate—and of first and last? Had Dudley come upon her in the red sunset, in the little shanty beside the road, would she have gone out to him in the mere leaping of youth and womanhood? Was it the moment, after all, and not the man? Or was it something more unerring still—more profound—the prophetic call of individual to individual, despite the specious pleading of the race? But she put the thought aside and returned casually to Dudley.
His heartiness was a tonic, and her vanity responded to the unaffected admiration in his eyes; but his chief claim to her regard lay in the fact that it was the general, and not herself, whom he endeavoured to propitiate.
"Well, my dear General!" he exclaimed cordially as he threw himself upon the worn horsehair sofa in what was called the "sitting-room," "I find your story about the fighting Texans capped by one Major Mason was telling me last night about the North Carolinians—" He got no farther.
"I've fought side by side with North Carolina regiments, and I tell you, sir, they're the best fighters God ever made!" cried the general. "Did you ever hear that story about 'em when I was wounded?"
Dudley shook his head and leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees and an expression of flattering absorption on his face.