"I want you to see every phase of our Virginia life," she had many times said, "so that when you go back to Boston you may know what there is in it to approve, what to admire, what to condemn, and what merely to laugh at. For I'm sure there is much in it that must strike Northern people as ludicrous. Anyhow I want you to see it all and understand all of it. Then I'm not afraid to trust our life and our ways and our impulses to your hands for explanation and exposition to people who are ignorant of them or know them only by prejudiced hearsay."
The events of this day, and especially Margaret's own conduct had been so different from all this as to awaken curiosity and compel attention. Both the curiosity and the attention had a deep and sincere affection for their prompting.
When Margaret drove away and the late rising, gibbous moon appeared above the tree tops and shone softly through the windows of Millicent's southeast room, the girl sat down there by a casement to wonder, to conjecture, to "guess," and, better still, to "think this thing out to the end."
"There is something wrong with Margaret," was her first thought. "She is disturbed and distressed, and she isn't the kind of person to be disturbed and distressed without adequate reason. Why didn't she go over to the Court House with me this morning and dine at the Magisters'? She intended to do so. She and I had planned it all out, and she had accepted Mrs. Magister's invitation. It was only at the last moment that she decided to stay and nurse her father's purely mythical gout. It was only five minutes before that that a note had come from Mrs. Magister, saying that Mr. Boyd Westover had come down out of the mountains and that she should 'compel' him to be one of her dinner guests. I wonder if that news brought on the attack of gout, and decided Margaret to stay at the Oaks and nurse it?
"Then again it is clear that Margaret does not expect Mr. Westover to visit her in the near future. I wonder why? His plantation adjoins this, and everybody says the two families have been intimate for generations. There must be some special reason. In fact there is. Somebody told me to-day that Colonel Conway had refused to join in the nomination of Mr. Westover, and that the fact is injuring Mr. Westover's canvass. I wonder what it means? Naturally Mr. Westover and Margaret should be sweethearts, and after a while they should marry each other. I wonder why things haven't gone that way? May be they have been too intimate in their childhood. No, that isn't the solution. It doesn't explain Margaret's care to avoid Mr. Westover. It doesn't explain her plan to send me to Fighting Creek without her. It doesn't explain her drive to-night. It doesn't explain anything. If they were mere intimates, too intimate to think of love, Mr. Westover would be a frequent guest at The Oaks and the relations of the two would be comradely."
She paused for a while in the formulation of her thinking into orderly phrases. Then she reflected:
"When I mentioned Margaret to him at dinner to-day he distinctly winced. Every time I have mentioned him to her to-night, she has turned the conversation to other subjects."
There was another long pause in the formulation of her thought. At last her common sense asserted itself and she said to herself:
"Millicent Danvers, you are treading upon dangerous ground, and you must get off it as quickly as possible. There has been a love affair between Margaret and Westover. You can't shut your eyes to that fact or pretend not to see it. Some break has come, but such breaks may be repaired, and it is your function to repair this one."
A wave of melancholy swept over her soul as she thought of this. She mightily admired Boyd Westover, and she had even dreamed a little dream with regard to him. She was a proud maiden in her way and as she searched her heart there in the moonlight, she decided that she had not suffered herself to fall in love with Westover.