“When he first came he did remarkably well; we spent a short time with our friends, the McDowells, at Ashland. They sent over and had everything arranged here before our coming, even the dinner served the day we arrived. Robert was, or seemed to be, highly pleased with the way we live in this part of the world. During our stay at Ashland, we went with our friends to one of the Governor’s Friday receptions; it was an affair of State, but under Southern auspices seemed almost our own. A congenial, pleasant party, each endeavoring to make you feel at home. Fresh, pretty girls served the ices, and chatted merrily a moment or so, then passed on.
“Robert looked at this dazzling South-scene, and in its stead fancied the gray-robed eastern zone dropping stiff, scentless, pensive-hued flowers. I use this illustration to you because you appreciate things high-sounding. But the joke on him and his metropolitan training was this—the first thing he remarked on was the unusual brightness and pretty gowning of the attendant waiters, ‘But the cool effrontery of their conduct,’ he said, ‘roused my ire and almost took away my presence of mind—why they even dared ask me if the evening had been an enjoyable one, and hoped to see me there often.’ He told us how he wiped the perspiration from his brow, and told himself the confounded impudence and intrusion ought to be swiftly checked, but for the life of him he couldn’t think of an effectual way of doing it. We asked him what he finally did. ‘I just took it all, and smiled back,’ he answered, with a crestfallen air.
“What was his astonishment when we told him he was smiling at the Governor’s daughters, and the queens of the social world. We quite enjoyed his discomfort, but he could not reconcile the difference in our ways and the ones he had known.
“Of late he seems to be falling back in his old ways,” she went on, her voice sinking lower yet. “I hope your presence will be strength in his weakness”—she sighed deeply, but the expression on her face was one of kindly resignation rather than hopeless grief.
Marrion started; every syllable of that sweet tremulous voice seemed to unnerve him utterly.
“I don’t want it to make your days darker, at least”——then he added:
“It is better not to be too good to men,” and there was in his voice an accent of kindly warning.
Cherokee listened pensively the while; she could see the path to be trodden by Robert’s side, uphill, rough, bristling with thorns.
“I have tried to do what is my part, my duty always.”