We joined the little band of hunters and thus formed a funny procession home. Mr. Chalmers and I were in the lead, his right hand gingerly clutching a most disinterested-looking mud-turtle, while, with the left, he attempted to help me over the rough places in the road. Waterloo was close at our heels, while the three little negroes, struggling with their giggles, tagged along behind.
The task of "toting" a mud-turtle fitted so ill with his immaculate clothes and intense dignity that I laughed every time I looked up at him. And he laughed. Perhaps we should have done this, even if nothing funny had happened, for the late afternoon was so beautiful, and everything seemed so happy. The birds were all making a cheerful fuss over going to bed, and the tinklings that lulled the distant folds seemed to me, for the first time in my life, joyous.
"I shall think of this scene the day you are inaugurated," I said, still laughing, after the mud-turtle had been deposited in an empty lard bucket and borne away by Waterloo and his retainers. We had found ourselves alone for a moment in the shaded, deserted library.
"You'll be there?" he asked, turning toward me as I stood on the hearth rug and leaned my elbow against the white marble mantelpiece. As he had carefully wiped from his finger-tips the imaginary dust from the mud-turtle I had been studying his profile in the mirror. It was the most perfect face I had ever seen—unless—
My eyes quickly traveled to the little oval portrait of Lord Byron, the old-time idol of my beauty-loving soul. I used to kiss his picture good night when I was twelve years old!
I glanced back again to the living presence of beauty equally as perfect. His gray eyes were upon me.
"You'll be there—if I am ever inaugurated?" he asked again.
"Of course. But you'll never see me."
Outside there was a glorious sunset, red and yellow and orange. It was like a sea of blood and a sea of gold, with a wonderful blending of the two. The radiance was trying to steal in at the shaded window, and I started across the room to open the blinds to its flood of glory. He put out his hand and stopped me.
"If you were there," he said slowly in his deep, rich voice—which is, in itself, attraction enough for any one man—"if you were there, I should be far more conscious of that than of the inauguration."