"Yiss-sor?"
Somehow it wouldn't work. The words refused to come. Love was too big and sweet and sacred. It couldn't be hinted at to a third person. And so he merely stammered:
"Will you—er—please—tell Miss Betty I'm here?"
"Yiss-sor!" Peggy giggled.
He was glad to be rid of her. He drew his handkerchief, mopped the perspiration from his brow and sat down by the open window to wait. His heart was pounding. He looked about the room with vague longing. He had spent many a swift hour of pain and joy in this room. The sight and sound of her had grown into his very life—he couldn't realize how intimately and how hopelessly until this moment of parting perhaps forever.
The portrait of her mother hung over the mantel—a life-size oil painting by a noted French artist, the same brilliant laughing eyes, the same deep golden brown hair, its wayward ringlets playing loosely about her fine forehead and shell-like ears.
Beyond a doubt this pretty mother with the sunshine of France in her blood had known how to flirt in her day—and her beautiful daughter was enough like that picture to have been her twin sister.
On the mantel beneath this portrait sat photographs in solid silver frames, one of Wendell Phillips, one of William Lloyd Garrison and one of John C. Fremont, the first Republican candidate for President. Directly opposite on the wall hung an oil painting of John Brown. Ned caught the flash of the fanatic in the old madman's eye and was startled at the striking resemblance to Senator Winter. He had never thought of it before. Gilbert Winter might have been his brother in the flesh as he undoubtedly was in spirit.
The thought chilled. He looked out the window with a sigh and wondered how far the old tyrant would carry his hatred of the South into his daughter's life. His eye rested for a moment on the row of lilacs in full bloom in the garden and caught the flash of the big new leaves of the magnolia which shadowed the rear wall. The early honeysuckle had begun to blossom on the south side, and the violet beds were a solid mass of gorgeous blue. Through the open window came the rich odor of the long rows of narcissus in full white glory where the jonquils had flamed a month ago.
What a beautiful world to be beaten into a scarred battlefield!