“We have all been lying down; the day is so sultry. We shall not have America’s things filling up the chambers much longer. I feel like giving her all the rooms in the house—yes, the plantation itself! If you can only make yourself comfortable a few days, we can change your room after the wedding.”
“The back bedroom makes not the slightest difference in the world to me, Mrs. Poynton”—
“O Miss Sally, I am so glad it makes no difference!”
—“but I am sorry I came at such an inconvenient time!”
Thus the duet went on, until Mrs. Poynton accepted as positive beneficence Miss Sally Vandewater’s willingness to descend from the back chamber, dine with the family, and sit down in the parlor.
Miss Sally had kept her sprightliness and her youthful shape. Her muslin dress was cut low, and her shoulders were concealed by a bertha of lace. Fine embroidered undersleeves made delicate frills about her folded hands. The curling-iron had created two large spirals at each temple, but the rest of her hair was pinned in a knot at the back of her head.
America Poynton came into the parlor in her tight-fitting habit of black velvet, and sat down with the guests, holding her riding-whip, her gauntlets, and tall hat.
“Are you going to ride in this heat?” inquired her aunt, the judge’s wife.
“We always ride Thursday afternoons, about four o’clock, if the weather is fine,” America replied.
She looked no less cool and white in the heavy fabric than in a gold dotted vaporous tissue which she had worn at dinner. Her black eyes moved with languid interest from speaker to speaker as the visiting chat ran on. America Poynton was called the proudest girl who ever appeared in the county seat from surrounding plantations. The manners of this tall beauty were considered too quiet by romping young people who danced, drove, and flirted to the limit of their privileges; yet she was sovereign among them, and ruled by a look while others expended noisy effort. It was told of her that she often sat veiled in her room to save her complexion from sun glare and wind, so matchless was it. She had a robe of black curls in which she could wrap herself when her maid let it down to brush. America was General Poynton’s only child. She had inherited from her grandmother a plantation adjoining her father’s, with more than a hundred slaves. When she went to boarding-school in the county town, one of her servants led to her every pleasant Friday evening a milk-white mule, saddled and bridled with silk, fine leather, and silver.