"Why did she marry him?" I could not help but ask.
She snapped her eyes and cleared her throat. "Ah, Lord, it distressed me nearly to death. Why did she, indeed? Giles was the cause of it. He picked out a nice old gentleman for his daughter's husband—a man of high family, a good politician. She cried over it, with her head in my lap, but Giles didn't see a tear, and she wouldn't let me say a word to him. And, to tell the truth, I didn't think it was so very bad; and it wasn't until he got to be so cranky. She always was a peculiar child; and I reckon after all she made up her mind that she might as well marry one man as another, so far as love was concerned. But just look at me, a-sitting up here and telling of things that I oughtn't to say a word about. Here he comes. Giles, did you bring my pipe? Well, it's a good thing you did, Sir."
Out in the breeze that came stirring through the magnolia garden we sat and smoked, the Senator with his chair tipped back and his feet high up against a fluted column. We talked in pleasant and almost confidential freedom, of many a home interest, both solemn and humorous, but the name of the young woman lay under a silence that no one dared to disturb. When I arose to take my leave they urged me to stay to supper, but my heart had grown heavy with the approach of night, and, with a lie in self-defense, I pleaded an engagement in the town.
CHAPTER XVII.
A SLOW STEP ON THE STAIRS.
In the cool of the morning, and often at night when the gulf breeze was blowing, I leaned back from my labor to muse upon the Senator's peculiar attitude toward me. A certain sort of innocence or honor had unquestionably blunted his eyesight and wrapped his reason in a silken gauze, but he had seen and felt the interference of his daughter's husband. And now why should he have pressed me to come again to his house, even though the wife were away? The old woman had said that he was trying to find a way that might lead to an easy apology. Apology for what? A husband's clumsy resentment. And did he not know that my entering the house again could easily be construed as a connivance on his part? The politician is so absorbed a student of man and his masculine ways that sometimes he may be forgetful of the delicate film that surrounds a woman's name. But in the South a woman's name is so secure that what in colder regions might be a film is here a sheet of steel; and overconfidence might seem a want of due consideration.
One evening I heard a slow and heavy step on the stair; and I waited, annoyed and nervous with the deliberate and solemn approach of the unwelcome visitor. I counted the steps, wondering when they would cease. I threw down my pen and got out of my chair. There was a shuffling of awkward feet at the open door.
"Come in, Washington," I cried, and when he had entered I turned angrily upon him.
"Oh, you have come to reproach me, to prove to my face that I am a liar."