"Yes—there are very few who fail to respond to being loved. It is so flattering," she smiled lightly. "But Natalia needed you just when you came. You know how out of sympathy she and Mrs. Brandon are?"
"That is not to be wondered at. Could you possibly find two more opposite natures? One—cool, calculating, and always just; the other—intense, wilful, passionate. Look at her now! She's more like some little fairy who has been lost from other fairies than anything else in the world. And how old she is at times! I feel that I am talking to some one a great deal older than I am. Tell me, Mrs. Houston," Sargent leaned nearer on the gate and his voice sank to a whisper, "now that she is going away, how can I make her remember me? If she were to go away and forget me—"
"She will not do that, my dear boy." She pressed his hand gently. "She's at the impressionable age, and she loves you with all her little, pent-up nature. She will not forget."
Sargent met her glance warmly. "You see, it is so different with me, from most men. My sensitiveness, my wretched infirmity, seems to make everything so much more serious to me. And when any one gets hold of my affections, I feel a tremendous need for them always. That is the way with Natalia—it was her sweet dependence, her yearning for sympathy, her quaint charm that have bound me tocher for ever. Of course she is only a child now," he hesitated suddenly, as if half unwilling to express his real feelings, "but if I could have the hope that she would come back to me some day—a woman loving me as she does now—anything would be worth enduring—for that!"
"If you all are going to talk all the evening, I'm going home," Natalia cried, from her pony. "And I told Zebby I'd be home surely by six o'clock."
Sargent hurriedly mounted his horse, which had been brought to the gate, and waved a farewell to Mrs. Houston. "Good-bye," she called to them, waving her handkerchief as they rode off. "I'm going to hear you make your maiden speech to-morrow. Good luck to you. Good-bye, Natalia."
It was almost dark when Sargent and Natalia left the town behind them, and through the dark forest bordering the cotton fields, a feathery crescent moon floated up and greeted them. The balmy spring breeze blew in their faces, and in the Western sky still lingered the faint glow of sunset. The cabins were sending up thin lines of white smoke, the delicious odour of fried bacon was in the air, and the sound of some one chopping wood in the distance gave a homely touch of comfort to the scene. Completing the peaceful holiness of the spring twilight came the harmonies of the slaves, singing as they went home from the day's work.
They rode along in silence. Natalia, dangling her little bonnet from its green ribbons, looked up at Sargent intently, but his eyes did not answer hers. They were bent on some distant object that she knew she could never see, and sighing slightly, she resigned herself to waiting for him to become aware of her presence. In her childlike adoration, there was sufficient happiness in being near him.
When the gate loomed before them through the vista of trees, Natalia guided her pony closer to Sargent, until he was forced to notice her.
"Aunt Maria said you were terribly bothered," she said, when he looked down at her out of his long abstraction. "Is that what makes you so different?" she ended plaintively.