"Jinny, did he—?"
"Yes—"
"Lige was right, and—and you, Jinny—I should never have trusted him.
The sneak!"
Virginia raised her head. The sun was slanting in yellow bars through the branches of the great trees, and a robin's note rose above the bass chorus of the frogs. In the pauses, as she listened, it seemed as if she could hear the silver sound of the river over the pebbles far below.
"Honey," said the Colonel,—"I reckon we're just as poor as white trash."
Virginia smiled through her tears.
"Honey," he said again, after a pause, "I must keep my word and let him have the business."
She did not reproach him.
"There is a little left, a very little," he continued slowly, painfully.
"I thank God that it is yours. It was left you by Becky—by your mother.
It is in a railroad company in New York, and safe, Jinny."
"Oh, Pa, you know that I do not care," she cried. "It shall be yours and mine together. And we shall live out here and be happy."