[XVI]
King turned towards the Dickerson place and walked on, a great weight of indecision on him. He had always held up Ann Boyd as his highest human example. She would laugh the idea to scorn—the idea of putting old Mark Bruce and his "lay-out" into such a home and circumstances; and yet, estimable as she was in many things, still she was not a free woman. She showed that by her slavery to the deepest hatred that ever burned in a human breast. No, it was plain to the young philosopher that in some things, at least, she was no guide for him. Rather might it not eventually result in the hate-hardened woman's learning brighter walks of life from him, young as he was? And yet, he told himself, the money was his, not theirs, and few really succeeded in life who gave away their substance.
The road led him past Jane Hemingway's cottage, and at the fence, in the barn-yard, he saw Virginia. He saw her, bareheaded, with her wonderful hair and exquisite profile and curve of neck, shoulder, and breast, before she was aware of his approach, and the view brought him to a stand behind some bushes which quite hid him from her view.
"It is Virginia—it must be—yes, it is Virginia!" he said, ecstatically. "She has become what I knew she would become, the loveliest woman in the world; she is exactly as I have fancied her all these years—proud, erect—and her eyes, oh! I must look into her eyes again! Ah, now I know what brought me home! Now I know why I was not content away. Yes, this was the cause—Virginia—my little friend and pupil—Virginia!"
She had turned her head, and with the startled look of a wild young fawn on the point of running away, she stood staring at him.
"Have you entirely forgotten me, Virginia?" he asked, advancing almost with instinctive caution towards her.
"Oh no, now I know you," she said, with, he thought, quite the girlish smile he had taken with him in his roaming, and she leaned over the fence and gave him her hand. He felt it pulsing warmly in his, and a storm of feeling—the accumulation of years—rushed over him as he looked into the eyes he had never forgotten, and marvelled over their wonderful lights and shadows. It was all he could do to steady his voice when he next spoke.
"It has been several years since I saw you," he said, quite aimlessly. "In fact, you were a little girl then, Virginia, and now you are a woman, a full-grown woman—just think of that! But why are you looking at me so steadily from head to foot?"
"I—I can hardly realize that it really is you," Virginia said. "You see, Luke—Mr. King, I mean—I thought you were—really, I thought you were dead. My mother has said it many times. She quite believed it, for some reason or other."
"She wanted to believe it, Virginia, with all respect to your mother. She hates Aunt Ann—Mrs. Boyd, you know—and it seems she almost hoped I'd never amount to anything, since it was Mrs. Boyd's means that gave me my education."