The poor woman, Mary, finding Samson Hat, in time, wishing to have a partner in the old storehouse, where he had become the only resident, had faith enough left to make her third marriage with him; and his means not only made good the property she had lost, but the hale old man presented her with a babe boy, which took the name of Meshach Phœbus, and on which Judge Custis sagely remarked that it "ought to have been a red-headed nigger, having both the fiery furnace and the blazing sun in its name."
On Samson Hat's death, which resulted from rheumatism reaching his heart, his widow joined her deliverer from slavery, James Phœbus, in the West, where he lived happily with his bride and stepson, and often wrote home of a friend he had there named Abe Lincoln, who made flat-boat voyages with him down the Mississippi. Both Ellenora Phœbus and Hulda Dennis reared Western families which played effective parts in the drama of civilization.
Vesta lost no time in setting free every slave about Teackle Hall and on the farms, with the approval of her father and husband also, and Roxy became the wife of Whatcoat, the rescued freedman, and the replacer, at her mistress's side, of poor Virgie, whose body was brought home and interred by the church where she had been her white sister's bridesmaid. The grief of Vesta for Virgie was quiet, but long, and as that of an equal, not a mistress, though she may have never known how equal.
In the fatalities thronging about her marriage Vesta observed one signal blessing—the complete reform of her father's habits.
He drank nothing whatever, supplying with fruit the pleasures of wine, and with exercise and business, on her husband's behests, the vagrant tours he once made in the forest for politics and amours.
Aware of his sociable and voluptuous nature, Vesta desired to see him married again, to complete and secure his reformation; and, while she was yet puzzling her brain to think of a wife to suit him, he solved the problem himself by cleanly cutting out Rhoda Holland from under the attentions of William Tilghman.
Rhoda had rapidly learned, and had corrected her grammar without losing her humor and her taste for dress, and her free, warm spirits soon made her an elegant woman, in whom, fortunately or unfortunately, a very decided worldly ambition germinated,—at once the proof and the vindication of parvenues.
She may have patterned it upon her uncle, or it may have emanated from his ambitious family stock, which, in and around him, had wakened to the vigor of a previous century; but it was so different from Vesta's nature that, while it but made nobler her soul of tranquil piety and ease of ladyhood, Vesta was interested in Rhoda's self-will and business coquetry.
A higher vitality than Vesta's, Rhoda Holland soon showed, in the superficial senses, more acuteness of sight and insight, quicker intuitions, more self-love, though not selfishness, less scrupulousness, perhaps, in dealing with her lovers, and, with fidelity and virtue, a pushing spirit that Vesta only mildly reproved, since she made the allowance that it was in part inspired by herself.
"Take care, dear," Vesta said one day, "that you grow not away from your heart. With all improving, there is a growth that begets the heart disease. Do you love cousin William Tilghman? He is too true a man to be hurt in his feelings. Nothing in this world, Rhoda, is a substitute for principle in woman."