As the strengthening rays of the sun, shining alike upon the just and the unjust, warmed his body, so his own benevolence warmed his heart.  He knew that he was doing a generous thing, and his soul felt in tune with the beamy light, the caroling of the birds, the freshness and fragrance of the morning.  When at last the child awoke, and, the recollection of the night coming full upon her, clung to him, weeping and trembling, he put his arm around her and comforted her with all the pet names his memory could conjure up.

CHAPTER III

DARDEN’S AUDREY

It was May Day in Virginia, in the year 1727.  In England there were George the First, by the grace of God of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King and Defender of the Faith; my Lord of Orkney, Governor in chief of Virginia; and William Gooch, newly appointed Lieutenant Governor.  In Virginia there were Colonel Robert Carter, President of the Council and Governor pro tem.; the Council itself; and Mistress Martha Jaquelin.

By virtue of her good looks and sprightliness, the position of her father in the community, and the fact that this 1st of May was one and the same with her sixteenth birthday, young Mistress Jaquelin was May Queen in Jamestown.  And because her father was a worthy gentleman and a gay one, with French blood in his veins and Virginia hospitality in his heart, he had made a feast for divers of his acquaintances, and, moreover, had provided, in a grassy meadow down by the water side, a noble and seasonable entertainment for them, and for the handful of townsfolk, and for all chance comers.

Meadow and woodland and marsh, ploughed earth and blossoming orchards, lay warm in the sunshine.  Even the ruined town, fallen from her estate, and become but as a handmaid to her younger sister, put a good face upon her melancholy fortunes.  Honeysuckle and ivy embraced and hid crumbling walls, broken foundations, mounds of brick and rubbish, all the untouched memorials of the last burning of the place.  Grass grew in the street, and the silent square was strewn with the gold of the buttercups.  The houses that yet stood and were lived in might have been counted on the fingers of one hand, with the thumb for the church.  But in their gardens the flowers bloomed gayly, and the sycamores and mulberries in the churchyard were haunts of song.  The dead below had music, and violets in the blowing grass, and the undertone of the river.  Perhaps they liked the peace of the town that was dead as they were dead; that, like them, had seen of the travail of life, and now, with shut eyes and folded hands, knew that it was vanity.

But the Jaquelin house was built to the eastward of the churchyard and the ruins of the town, and, facing the sparkling river, squarely turned its back upon the quiet desolation at the upper end of the island and upon the text from Ecclesiastes.