“Don’t take them,” interposed ’Lena. “You won’t need them, and nothing will harm them here.”
After a little, grandma was persuaded, and her last charge to Mrs. Livingstone and Carrie was, “that they keep the dum niggers from her things.”
Habit with Mrs. Nichols was everything. She had lived at Maple Grove for years, and every niche and corner of her room she understood. She knew the blacks and they knew her, and ere she was half-way to Woodlawn, she began to wish she had not started. Politely, but coldly, Mrs. Graham received her, saying “I thought, perhaps, you would return with them to spend the day!” laying great emphasis on the last words, as if that, of course, was to be the limit of her visit Grandma understood it, and it strengthened her resolution of not remaining long.
“Miss Graham don’t want to be pestered with me,” said she to ’Lena, the first time they were alone, “and I don’t mean that she shall be. ’Tilda is used to me, and she don’t mind it now, so I shall go back afore long. You can come to see me every day, and once in a while I’ll come here.”
That afternoon a heavy rain came on, and Mrs. Graham remarked to Mrs. Nichols that “she hoped she was not homesick, as there was every probability of her being obliged to stay over night!” adding, by way of comfort, that “she was going to Frankfort the next day to make purchases for ’Lena, and would take her home.”
Accordingly, the next morning Mrs. Livingstone was not very agreeably surprised by the return of her mother-in-law, who, Mrs. Graham said, “was so home-sick they couldn’t keep her.”
That night when Mrs. Graham, who was naturally generous, returned from the city, she left at Maple Grove a large bundle for grandma, consisting of dresses, aprons, caps, and the like, which she had purchased as a sort or peace-offering, or reward, rather, for her having decamped so quietly from Woodlawn. But the poor old lady did not live to wear them. Both her mind and body were greatly impaired, and for two or three years she had been failing gradually. There was no particular disease, but a general breaking up of the springs of life, and a few weeks after ’Lena’s arrival at Woodlawn,, they made another grave on the sunny slope, and Mabel no longer slept alone.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
DURWARD.
From place to place and from scene to scene Durward had hurried, caring nothing except to forget, if possible, the past, and knowing not where he was going, until he at last found himself in Richmond, Virginia. This was his mother’s birthplace, and as several of her more distant relatives were still living here, he determined to stop for awhile, hoping that new objects and new scenes would have some power to rouse him from the lethargy into which he had fallen. Constantly in terror lest he should hear of ’Lena’s disgrace, which he felt sure would be published to the world, he had, since his departure from Laurel Hill, resolutely refrained from looking in a newspaper, until one morning some weeks after his arrival at Richmond.
Entering a reading-room, he caught up the Cincinnati Gazette, and after assuring himself by a hasty glance that it did not contain what he so much dreaded to see, he sat down to read it, paying no attention to the date, which was three or four weeks back. Accidentally he cast his eye over the list of arrivals at the Burnet House, seeing among them the names of “Mr. H. R. Graham, and Miss L. R. Graham, Woodford county, Kentucky!”