"I thought you meant that," she said under her breath.
"It is not drunken Sam Fetridge that loves you. I have culture, intelligence, energy. I am a better man at bottom than Dave Cabarreux, and one nearer akin to yourself."
"I love him: I do not love you." She said it mechanically, her eyes fixed on his with a frightened, curious look of recognition. It followed him as he left her, half staggering across the porch: it was on him still as he came back, and, leaning against the pillar, held out his hand again to her.
She did not take it now.
"Miss Calhoun, there is not in the United States a man with more ambition than I have, nor one with a better chance to take his place among other men if—if I had your hand to hold. Give it to me: be my wife. For God's sake, don't take the chance from me!"
"Major Fetridge," she said resolutely, but with a strange quaver in her voice, "I love David Cabarreux. I never can marry you. If there is anything else that I can do—"
"No, there is nothing you can do," he cried vehemently. "It would have been better you had thought me a drunken brute like the others, and had not recognized me. For you did recognize me, you know."
He turned without another word, and walked down the hill with slouching step and head bent. Isabel tried to think of him as the tippling major, but it seemed as if she had talked to another man.
Mr. Calhoun met Major Fetridge as he came home, but he was in an ill-humor and did not speak to him. Late that evening Sam lay on a bench by the pump. He had been drinking heavily, but he was sober. The squire and Grayson were discussing the event of the day, the will.