“Thank God for that! Go on, who was accountable?”
“Your guardian, Matthew Loring. He explains that he made the arrangement, having in mind the social entanglement of boys within our own knowledge, who have rushed into unequal marriages, or––or associations equally deplorable with scheming women who are alert where moneyed youth is concerned. Mr. Loring, as your guardian, determined to forestall such complications in your case. From a business point of view he did not think it a bad investment, since, if you for any reason, objected to this arrangement, a girl so well educated, even accomplished, could be disposed of at a profit.”
McVeigh was walking up and down the room.
“So!” he said, bitterly, “that was Matthew Loring’s amiable little arrangement. That girl, then, belonged not to his estate, but to Gertrude’s. He was her guardian as well as mine; he would have given me the elder sister as a wife, and the younger one as a slave. What a curse the man is! It is for such hellish deeds that every Southerner outside of his own lands is forced to defend slavery against heavy odds. The outsiders never stop to consider that there is not one man out of a thousand among us who would use his power as this man has used it in this case; the many are condemned for the sins of the few! Go on; what became of the girl?”
“She was, in accordance with this agreement, sent to a first-class school, from which she disappeared––escaped, and never was found again. The money advanced from your estate for her education is, therefore, to be repaid you, with the interest to date; you, of course, must not lose the money, since Loring has failed to keep his part of the contract.”
“Good God!” muttered McVeigh, continuing his restless walk; “it seems incredible, damnable! Think of it!––a girl with the blood, the brain, the education of a white woman, and bought in my name! I will have nothing––nothing to do with such cursed traffic!”
Neither of them heard the smothered sobs of the woman kneeling there back of that curtain; all the world had been changed for her by his words.
She did not hear the finale of their conversation, only the confused murmur of their voices came to her; then, after a little, there was the closing of a door, and Colonel McVeigh was alone.
He was seated in the big chair where Matthew Loring had received the stroke which meant death. The hammock 373 was still beside it, and she knelt there, touching his arm, timidly.