CHAPTER X
WHAT HAPPENED THIRTY YEARS AGO
When Shirley came across the lawn at Rosewood, Major Montague Bristow sat under the arbor talking to her mother.
The major was massive-framed, with a strong jaw and a rubicund complexion—the sort that might be supposed to have attained the utmost benefit to be conferred by a consistent indulgence in mint-juleps. His blue eyes were piercing and arched with brows like sable rainbows, at variance with his heavy iron-gray hair and imperial. His head was leonine and he looked like a king who has humbled his enemy. It may be added that his linen was fine and immaculate, his black string-tie precisely tied and a pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses swung by a flat black cord against his white waistcoat. There was a touch of the military in the squareness of shoulder and the lift of the rugged head, no less than in the gallant little bow with which he rose to greet the girl coming toward them.
“Shirley,” said her mother, “the major’s brutal, and he shan’t have his mint-julep.”
“What has he been doing?” asked the other, her brows wrinkling in a delightful way she had.
“He has reminded me that I’m growing old.”
Shirley looked at the major skeptically, for his chivalry was undoubted. During a long career in law and legislature it had been said of him that he could neither speak on the tariff question nor defend a man for murder, without first paying a tribute to “the women of the South, sah.”