“Yes, Horace. It means that I love some one else so deeply that I can never have a love thought for any other man. I love him with all my heart, although I don’t suppose I shall ever marry him. But I shall never marry any one else, and I could no more think of you or any one else with the kind of love you want than I could if I were his wife.”
There was something like reverence in the gesture with which he put down her hand. “Then that is the end of it for me, Rhoda. Would you mind telling me, is it that”—he paused an instant, supplying mentally the adjective with which he usually thought of Rhoda’s lover—“slaveholder, Delavan, from Kentucky?”
“Yes, Horace.”
He rose and took up his hat. “If that’s the way it is with you,” he began, then stopped, looking fixedly. “Poor girl!” he went on, resting his hand lightly for an instant upon her head. “You ought to have had a happier fate!”
“It’s as good as I deserve, Horace,” she replied cheerfully. Then her face lighted with the glow that had been in her heart since Delavan’s visit, and she went on: “And it might have been so much worse!”
That same glow, as of profound inward happiness, was upon her countenance the next day as she sat in the court room. On one side of her was her father and on the other sat Rachel Benedict, with wrinkled hands primly folded in the lap of her plain gray gown, her kindly, bright old eyes and sweet smile bent now and then upon her young friend as she whispered some encouraging word. Behind her were Mrs. Hardaker and Marcia Kimball and other friends from the Hillside Female Anti-Slavery Society.
In the back of the room, throughout the trial, sat Jefferson Delavan. He was always in his place in the same seat, when she entered, and their eyes would meet once and a faint smile play around her lips for an instant. Then she would not look again in his direction, but her face kept always its glow of inward happiness.
Horace Hardaker sat with his gaze moodily fixed upon Delavan’s dark head. Jeff’s eyes were upon Rhoda’s face and Hardaker felt resentfully that within their depths must lie some hint of the lover’s yearning. It was almost time for him to begin his address. But his thoughts were not upon what he was about to say nor upon how he could most move the jury. Instead they were busy, with indignant wonder, upon how “that damned slaveholder” had contrived to win the rich and undying love of such a girl as Rhoda Ware.
For the way of a man with a maid is always a sealed book to other men. A woman can guess, or she knows instinctively, how and why another woman has won a man’s love. But the side of a man’s nature with which he does his wooing is so different from any manifestation of himself that he makes among his fellows that to them it is an unknown land. Therefore they are inclined to be skeptical as to its attractiveness.
But Hardaker was much more than skeptical. He was irritated, and even angry, that “such a man as that” should have dared to think himself worthy of Rhoda’s love. And when he presently rose to address the jury the rankling in his heart lent sharper vigor to every thrust he made against the slave power and put into his tones a savage indignation as, with eyes fixed upon Delavan’s face, he thundered his indictments.