“Their object wasn't robbery,” said Betty.
“No?” Ware's glance was uneasy.
“It seems that some one objects to his coming here, Tom—here to Belle Plain to see me, I suppose,” added Betty. The planter moved uncomfortably in his seat, refusing to meet her eyes.
“He shouldn't put out a yarn like that, Bet. It isn't just the thing for a gentleman to do—”
“He isn't putting it out, as you call it! He has told no one, so far as I know,” said Betty quickly. Mr. Ware fell into a brooding silence. “Of course, Charley wouldn't mention my name in any such connection!” continued Betty.
“Who cares how often he comes here? You don't, and I don't. There's more back of this than Charley would want you to know. I reckon he's got his enemies; some one's had a grudge against him and taken this way to settle it.” The planter's tone and manner were charged with an unpleasant significance.
“I don't like your hints, Tom,” said Betty. Her heightened color and the light in her eyes warned Tom that he had said enough. In some haste he finished his second cup of tea, a beverage which he despised, and after a desultory remark or two, withdrew to his office.
Betty went up-stairs to her own room, where she tried to finish a letter she had begun the day before to Judith Ferris, but she was in no mood for this. She was owning to a sense of utter depression and she had been at home less than a month. Struggle as she might against the feeling, it was borne in upon her that she was wretchedly lonely. She had seated herself by an open window. Now, resting her elbows on the ledge and with her chin between her palms, she gazed off into the still night. A mile distant, on what was called “Shanty Hill,” were the quarters of the slaves. The only lights she saw were there, the only sounds she heard reached her across the intervening fields. This was her world. A half-savage world with its uncouth army of black dependents.
Tom's words still rankled. Betty's temper flared up belligerently as she recalled them. He had evidently meant to insinuate that Charley had lied outright when he told her the motive for the attack, and he had followed it up by that covert slur on his character. Charley's devotion was the thing that redeemed the dull monotony of existence. She became suddenly humble and tenderly penitent in her mood toward him; he loved her much better than she deserved, and she suspected that her own attitude had been habitually ungenerous and selfish. She had accepted all and yielded nothing. She wondered gravely why it was she did not love him; she was fond of him—she was very, very fond of him; she wondered if after all, as he said, this were not the beginning of love, the beginning of that deeper feeling which she was not sure she understood, not sure she should ever experience.
The thought of Charley's unwavering affection gave her a great sense of peace; it was something to have inspired such devotion, she could never be quite desperate while she had him. She must try to make him understand how possible an ideal friendship was between them, how utterly impossible anything else. She would like to have seen Charley happily married to some nice girl—“I wonder whom!” thought Betty, gazing deep into the night through her drooping lashes. She considered possible candidates for the happiness she herself seemed so willing to forego, but for one reason or another dismissed them all. “I am not sure I should care to see him marry,” she confessed under her breath. “It would spoil everything. Men are much nicer than girls!” And Charley possessed distinguished merits as a man; he was not to be too hastily disposed of, even for his own good. She viewed him in his various aspects, his character and disposition came under her critical survey. Nature had given the young planter a handsome presence; wealth and position had come to him as fortuitously. The first of these was no great matter, perhaps; Betty herself was sometimes burdened with a sense of possession, but family was indispensable.