"What ails you, Jacqueline? I could swear that you're in love, and yet I don't believe you are in love with Ludwell Cary!—though I am sure you ought to be. It's not Mr. Lee, nor Mr. Page, nor Jack Martin, nor—you're never in love with Fairfax Cary?"
Jacqueline laughed, "How absurd, Unity!—though may be some day I shall love him as a cousin!"
Unity regarded her with a puzzled gathering of black brows. "There's no one else that by any stretch of imagination I can believe you in love with—unless it's Mr. Pincornet!"
"Oh, now you certainly have it!" cried Jacqueline, with another tremulous laugh. She released herself from her cousin's arm. "I am going to tell Deb good-night. And Unity—I don't want Mr. Cary to speak to-night, nor to-morrow night, nor any other night! I'll stay at Fontenoy—I'll stay at Fontenoy and care for Aunt Nancy and Deb and Uncle Dick and Uncle Edward. I'll dance at your wedding, Unity, but you'll not dance at mine!"
She was gone. Unity sat down upon the porch steps and began to name upon her fingers the eligible young men of three counties. In her anxiety to account for Jacqueline's pallor and the dark beneath her eyes, she went far afield, but she met with no success. "It's not one of them!" she sighed at last. "And yet, she's changed—"
Jacqueline went slowly upstairs, a slender figure in white, touching with her hand the polished balustrade. When she reached the long and wide upper hall, she passed steadily along it, but she turned her eyes upon a door at the far end, the door of the blue room. Arrived in her own cool and fragrant chamber, she found Deb already asleep in the small bed, her yellow hair spread upon the pillow, her gown open at the throat, a rag doll in the hollow of her arm. Upon the floor, with her head against the bed, sat Miranda, as fast asleep as her mistress. At Jacqueline's touch she awoke, smiled widely, and was on her feet with a spring. "Yaas, Miss Jacqueline, I done put Miss Deb to bed. Mammy Chloe say dat niggah Joab don' know nothin' 'bout er broken ahm, an' she too busy in de blue room. Yaas'm, I done mek Miss Deb wash her face an' say her prayers. Kin I go now?"
Alone, Jacqueline stood for a minute beside the sleeping child, then bent and kissed Deb's brown neck. Moving to a window, she sat down before it, resting her arm upon the sill and her head upon her arm. Outside the window grew a giant fir tree, shading the room, and giving it at times an aspect too cold and northern. But Jacqueline loved the tree, and loved and fed the birds that in winter perched upon the dark boughs. Now, between the needles, the eastern sky looked blue and cold. Jacqueline, sitting idle, felt her eyes fill with slow tears. They did not fall. She was not lacking in self-control, and she told herself that of late she had wept too often. She sat very still, her head bowed upon her listless arm, while the moments passed, bearing with them pictures seen through unshed tears. She was living over the days of the Three-Notched Road, and she beheld each shifting scene by the light of a passion that she believed to be unreasonable, unnatural, secret, and without hope. Her uncle's voice came to her from the hall below. "Jacqueline, Jacqueline!" She arose, bathed her eyes, and went downstairs.
It was the custom of the family to gather after supper upon the great white pillared porch, and to sit through the twilight. The men smoked slowly and reflectively, the women sat with folded hands, watching the last glow upon the hills, and the brightening of the evening star; dreamily listening to the choir of frogs, the faint tinkle of cowbells, the bleating of folded lambs, and the continual rustle of the poplar leaves.
Jacqueline took her seat beside Unity. Colonel Churchill, in his especial chair, was smoking like a benevolent volcano; at a small table Major Edward was playing Patience. On the broad porch steps below Jacqueline and Unity half sat, half lay, the two Carys. The fireflies were beginning to show, and out of the distance came a plaintive Whip-poor-will—Whip-poor-will!
"I shall have," said Ludwell Cary, "the vines at Greenwood trained like these. There could be no better way."