“But why should he go away?”
“I can’t imagine, unless she had really loved the other man. If so, she couldn’t have borne seeing Valiant afterward.” She paused with a little laugh. “But then,” she said, “it may have been nothing so romantic. Perhaps they quarreled over cards or differed as to whose horse was the better jumper. Valiant’s grandfather, who was known as Devil-John, is said to have called a man out because he rode past him on the wrong side. Our ancestors in Virginia, I’m afraid, didn’t stand on ceremony when they felt uppish.”
He did not smile. He was looking out once more over the luminous stretch of fields, his side-face toward her. Curious and painful questions were running through his brain. With an effort, he thrust these back and recalled his attention to what she was saying.
“You wonder, I suppose, that we feel as we do toward these old estates, and set store by them, and—yes, and brag of them insufferably as we do. But it’s in our blood. We love them as the English do their ancient manors. They have made our legends and our history. And the history of Virginia—”
She broke off with a shrug and, more himself now, he finished for her: “—isn’t exactly a trifling part of the history of these United States. You are right.”
“You Northerners think we are desperately conceited,” she smiled, “but it’s true. We’re still as proud of our land, and its old, old places, and love them as well as our ancestors ever did. We wouldn’t change a line of their stately old pillars or a pebble of their darling homey gardens. Do you wonder we resent their passing to people who don’t care for them in the Southern way?”
“But suppose the newcomers do care for them?”
Her lips curled. “A young millionaire who has lived all his life in New York, to care for Damory Court! A youth idiotically rich, brought up in a superheated atmosphere of noise and money!”
He started uncontrollably. So that was what she thought! He felt himself flushing. He had wondered what would be his impression of the neighborhood and its people; their possible opinion of himself had never occurred to him.
“Why,” she went on, “he’s never cared enough about the place even to come and see it. For reasons of his own—good enough ones, perhaps, according to the papers,—he finds himself tired of the city. I can imagine him reflecting.” With a mocking simulation of a brown-study, she put her hand to her brow, pushing impatiently back the wayward luster: “‘Let me see. Don’t I own an estate somewhere in the South? Ah-ha! yes. If I remember, it’s in Virginia. I’ll send down and fix up the old hovel.’ Then he telephones for his architect to run down and see what ‘improvements’ it needs. And—here you are!”