"That depends," said Chester. "You see, he may not get at the matter the very day he arrives in Savannah, for he is a great old codger to let matters slide in the background while he is meeting old friends. But, little girl, I don't intend to let it slip out of his mind. I'll drop him a line and urge him to fix it up if possible. That, I think, will bring him around. Your mother is sound asleep," he added, seductively; "let's walk a little way down the road. I sha'n't keep you long. I feel awfully happy with you all to myself."
She raised no objection as he unfastened the latch of the gate with deft, noiseless fingers and, smiling playfully, drew her after him and silently closed the opening.
"Now, this is more like it," he said. "Lovers should have the starry skies above them and open fields about. Forget your mother a little while, Virginia. It will all come out right, and you and I will be the happiest people in the world. Great Heavens! how perfectly lovely you are in the moonlight! You look like a statue of Venus waking to life."
They had reached the brook which rippled on brown stones across the road at the foot of the slight rise on which the cottage stood, when they saw some one approaching. It was Ann Boyd driving her cow home, her heavy skirts pinned up half-way to her stout knees. With one sharp, steady stare at them, Ann, without greeting of any kind, lowered her bare, dew-damp head and trudged on.
"It's that miserly old hag, Ann Boyd," Langdon said, lightly. "I don't like her any more than she does me. I reckon that old woman has circulated more lies about me than all the rest of the country put together."
At the first sight of Ann, Virginia had withdrawn her hand from Langdon's arm and passionate clasp of fingers, but the action had not escaped Ann's lynx eyes.
"It's coming, thank God, it's coming as fast as a dog can trot!" she chuckled as she plodded along after her waddling cow. "Now, Jane Hemingway, you'll have something else to bother about besides your blasted cancer—something that will cut your pride as deep as that does your selfish flesh. It won't fail to come, either. Don't I know the Chester method? Huh, if I don't, it isn't known. With his head bent that way, and holding her hand with hand and arm both at once, he might have been his father over again. Huh, I felt like tearing his eyes out, just now—the young beast! I felt like she was me, and the old brink was yawning again right at my feet. Huh, I felt that way about Jane Hemingway's daughter—that's the oddest thing of all! But she is beautiful; she's the prettiest thing I ever saw in all my life. No wonder he is after her; she's the greatest prize for a Chester in Georgia. Jane's asleep right now, but she'll wake before long and she'll wonder with all her wounded pride how God ever let her close her eyes. Yes, my revenge is on the way. I see the light its blaze has cast on ahead. It may be Old Nick's torch—what do I care? He can wave it, wave it, wave it!"
She increased her step till she overtook her cow. Laying her hand on the animal's back, she gently patted it. "Go on home to your calf, you hussy," she laughed. "The young of even your sort is safer, according to the plan that guides the world, than Jane Hemingway's. She's felt so safe, too, that she's made it her prime object in life to devil a person for exactly what's coming under her own roof—exactly to a gnat's heel!"
[XIX]
One evening, about four days later, Mrs. Waycroft hurried in to see Ann. The sharp-sighted woman, as she nodded indifferently to the visitor, and continued her work of raking live coals under a three-legged pot on the hearth, saw that Mrs. Waycroft was the fluttering bearer of news of some sort, but she made no show of being ready to listen to it. The widow, however, had come to be heard, she had come for the sheer enjoyment of recital.