Felicia Grigsby was a married woman with a David and a Jean of her own when she told me the story of her Old-Field school-days. Even then she was unable to describe without deep emotion the cruel scene I have just sketched.
"No," she said, in answer to my exclamation of indignant horror, "his wife did not leave him even after that. The act of infamous cruelty seemed to subdue her utterly. I never saw her again. I dared not visit her, and she never went beyond her yard gate, even to church. It was said she had fallen into a gentle melancholy. I am thankful, for her sake, that it was gentle. Her children loved her dearly. I hope they brought some balm to the wounded spirit.
"The youngest was ten years old when his mother died. The week after her burial her husband sold the plantation through a real-estate agent to my brother David. A month later he left the county and State, and removed to Louisiana. I hear that he has grown rich there on a sugar plantation. He says that the climate of Virginia did not agree with him. That was lucky for him—and for Virginia."