“She came out for a day just before Christina,” said Anne, smiling, “and then she ran off to Kentucky. I think she was afraid that she was one of the two women on the list of Sixty.”
“It must have been a blow to her pride when she found that she was not,” said Stephen, who had a keen remembrance of her conduct upon a certain Sunday not a year gone.
Impelled by the same inclination, they walked in silence to the house and sat down on the edge of the porch. The only motion in the view was the smoke from the slave quarters twisting in the wind, and the hurrying ice in the stream.
“Poor Jinny!” said Anne, with a sigh, “how she loved to romp! What good times we used to have here together!”
“Do you think that she is unhappy?” Stephen demanded, involuntarily.
“Oh, yes,” said Anne. “How can you ask? But you could not make her show it. The other morning when she came out to our house I found her sitting at the piano. I am sure there were tears in her eyes, but she would not let me see them. She made some joke about Spencer Catherwood running away. What do you think the Judge will do with that piano, Stephen?”
He shook his head.
“The day after they put it in his room he came in with a great black cloth, which he spread over it. You cannot even see the feet.”
There was a silence. And Anne, turning to him timidly, gave him a long, searching look.
“It is growing late,” she said. “I think that we ought to go back.”