Her trepidation and weakness were but momentary. She mastered herself by a strong effort, and, with a brave, earnest smile, put both her hands in his.
"Yes, I will marry you," she said.
He lifted the hands swiftly and kissed them, then he led her to one of the seats.
"I have been planning such a delightful life for us," he began, and with passionate eloquence went on to disclose his idea of their going abroad, for a time at least, to live in Italy or Switzerland or France, together, for each other, the blissful life of love.
Her imagination responded readily to his eloquent descriptions, and her face was soon aglow with enthusiastic interest. She had always dreamed of foreign travel, and the subject was one into which she could cast herself with all the abandon of a child. He saw with delight how his proposition pleased her, and he talked with a freedom and earnestness that were irresistible. They were now very happy lovers indeed, and the time sped on golden wings until a servant came to call them to luncheon. They had slipped away from the troubles that had haunted them into the true realm of the young—the rosy region of dreams.
The mid-day meal at the DeKay place was not, as is, perhaps, the prevailing custom on plantations, the principal one. Dinner came on early in the evening and was all the more enjoyable on account of the delightful temperature of the hour throughout most of the year.
Late in the afternoon a young gentleman from an adjoining plantation came down the river in a little boat to make a friendly visit. He had been one of the guests on the day of the shoot, a dapper, talkative youth whose fund of good spirits made him welcome at all times. He liked wine and tobacco, was somewhat of a horseman and never tired of discussing questions of angling and field sports. Of course General DeKay, who cared for nothing so much as such companionship, would not let him return until after dinner. His name was Lapham. The Laphams were a fine old family—nearly all the Alabama families below the mountains are reported to be fine and old—and he retained in his speech and manner much that was ultra old and Southern, along with certain strong traces of quite modern "slang and snap," as it is called.
He sat next to Mrs. Ransom at table, entertaining her and the rest with an account of some recent races at New Orleans, or Tuscaloosa, or somewhere, that he had been to see. There had been a row among some sports ending in one being killed.
"It was a mean murder," he remarked, "the man was given no show. I hope the law will be swift, as in the case of your man, Colonel Reynolds."
Reynolds looked at him with quick inquiry and Mrs. Ransom's face showed the shrinking of her feelings.