From this day Roma Fronde’s busy life began.
The site of the schoolhouse was chosen in a grove on the borders of the estate nearest the village of Goeberlin, and a number of workmen were employed to get the stone from the quarries and to lay the basement.
Roma, with her two advisers, Dr. Shaw and Mr. Stone, soon perfected the plan for the superstructure, and stone masons and carpenters were set to work. Local mechanics were also employed to make the desks and benches, pails, brooms, and so forth.
It was thought that the building might be completely finished and furnished by the first of August, but though the building could then be quite ready for occupancy, Roma knew the school could not be opened in the summer vacation time, or until, at earliest, the first of September. She advertised for competent teachers, who would be ready to enter upon their duties at that date, and from a host of applicants she selected one young and one middle-aged woman, both unmarried.
When these plans were all settled Roma decided to leave their execution in the hands of her two clerical friends and to go to Washington to begin her preparations for turning the Guyon Manor House, on the Isle of Storms, into a free sanitorium for destitute invalids and children. There was not so much to do in that direction, but it needed to be done at once.
There was another reason, also, why Roma wished to get away from Goblin Hall as soon as possible.
Paul Stone, in his character of adviser and assistant in the work of founding the free colored school, had been an almost daily visitor at the hall. He had been attracted and fascinated by the gracious and majestic beauty of the person and character of Roma Fronde. He loved, adored and worshiped her. He was completely infatuated with her, and though he never breathed the passion that was consuming him, he constantly betrayed himself.
Roma’s kind heart was touched by his dumb devotion, but now she found it difficult to be as gentle and friendly in her manner to him as she wished to be, without encouraging hope, and perhaps precipitating a proposal from him, which she would be obliged to meet with a rejection—a rejection painful to herself and mortifying to him. She wished to avoid giving him this humiliation. The only way out of the difficulty that occurred to her mind was to leave the neighborhood as soon as possible.
So one morning, when Dr. Shaw called to see her, she said to him:
“I think I shall go to Washington early next week?”