Hand in hand the twain picked their way carefully down to the ledge. By a curious freak of chance the explosive had landed directly above the outcrop, and the ground about was strewn with fragments torn off by the concussion. One of the bits which Grace eagerly picked up was spangled with dull yellow points.
The man with his hand on the ledge looked out dreamily into the blue ether; the woman cuddled in the hollow of his arm looked only at him.
CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE HOUSE OF POTIPHAR
Mrs. Robert Carter was far too astute a politician to openly offer any opposition to her daughter's devotion for Douglass, though fully determined to unravel what she deemed a preposterous and altogether undesirable entanglement.
Having herself fought the hard fight against the ogres of Poverty and Adversity, she had no foolish illusions in the premises, and had long ago resolved that her daughter should be spared the grim heartaches that even love cannot wholly bar from the proverbial cottage. Her chief ambition was to see Grace established in a position commanding at the very outset all the amenities to which the girl had been accustomed from childhood, both of her children having come after Carter pere had achieved a substantial competence. There were many among the girl's suitors who offered this and more, and she felt a bitter impatience with the extravagance of youthful passion which now so perversely menaced all her plans.
While cordially conceding the beauty of love in the abstract, the concreteness of wealth and social position appealed far more potently to the world-worn old woman, who temporarily forgot her own girlish exaltations of days long gone in her apprehensions for her daughter's future.
Never was woman better qualified or disposed to appreciate youthful virility and sterling manliness; her personal esteem for Douglass was very high, and had it not been for the, to her, insuperable bar of his comparative poverty, she would have welcomed him with open arms. As it was, she was very indulgently disposed towards him. If his mines really developed into bonanza she would interpose no obstacle in his way. But in her wide experience she had known all too many just as promising prospects as his turn out miserable failures; when he had incontrovertibly established the value of his claims it would be time enough to consider his proposed alliance with her family.
All this she said to him with frank candor in a letter answering his request for her sanction to his engagement to Grace.