“Yes, that would be the only thing,” Dwight made answer. “She has a right to happiness, and it would have been wrong for her to have tied herself to me, when I was what I was, and when I am still as great a failure as I am.”
He turned suddenly out onto the passage, and Garner heard his resounding tread as he walked away.
“Poor old chap,” Garner mused, as he leaned forward and looked at the threadbare toes of his slippers, “if he weathers this storm he'll make a man right—if not, he'll go down with the great majority, the motley throng meant for God only knows what purpose.”
CHAPTER VI.
HE Warren homestead was in a turmoil of excitement over Helen's return. The ex-slaves of the family for miles around had assembled to celebrate the occasion in quite the ante-bellum fashion. The men and grown boys sat about the front lawn and on the steps of the long veranda and talked of the day Helen was born, of her childhood, of her beauty and numerous conquests, away from them, and of the bare possibility of her deigning to accept the hand of some one of her powerful and wealthy suitors.