“There is reason,” answered Jacqueline.  “I think highly, highly of you!  You would make a woman happy;—­all her life she would travel a sunny road!  I prize your friendship—­I am loth to lose it.  But as for me,”—­she locked her hands against her breast,—­“there is that within me that cries, The shadowed road!—­the shadowed road!"

She rose, and Cary rose with her.  “Forgive me,” she said.  “Is it not cruel that we hurt each other so?  Forgive—­forget.”

“I would forgive you,” he answered, with emotion, “the suffering and the sorrow of a thousand lives.  But forget you—­never!  I’ll love you well and I’ll love you long.  Nor will I despair.  To-night is dark, but the sun may shine to-morrow.  Think of me as of one who will love you to the end.”  He took her hand and kissed it, then stood aside, saying, “I will not face the lights quite yet.”  She passed into the hail and up the stairway, and he turned and went down the porch steps into the May night.

CHAPTER IX

EXPOSTULATION

The next morning Ludwell Cary rose early, ordered his horse, and opened the door of his brother’s room.  “Fair,” he said, as the younger Cary sat up in bed, with a nightcap wonderfully askew upon his handsome head, “I am off for Greenwood.  Make my excuses, will you, to Colonel Churchill and the ladies?  I will not be back till supper-time.”  He turned to leave the room.  “And Fair—­if you have anything to say to Miss Dandridge, this is the shepherd’s hour.  We go home to-morrow.”

“What the Devil?”—­began the younger Cary.

“No, not the Devil,” said the other, with a twist of the lip half humorous, half piteous.  “Just woman.”

He was gone.  Fairfax Cary looked at his watch, then rose from his bed and looked out of the window at the rose and dew of the dawn.  “What the Devil!” he said again to himself; and then, with a forehead of perplexity, “He was up late last night—­out in the garden alone.  He rides off to Greenwood with the dawn, and we go home to-morrow.  She can’t have refused him—­that’s not possible!” He went back to bed to study matters over.  At last, “The jade!” he exclaimed with conviction, and two hours later, when he came down to breakfast, wished Miss Churchill good-morning with glacial courtesy.

Jacqueline, behind the coffee urn, had heavy-lidded eyes, and her smile was tremulous.  Unity, brilliant and watchful, regarded the universe and the hauteur of young Mr. Cary with lifted brows.  Major Churchill, when he appeared, shot one glance at the place that was Ludwell Cary’s, another at his niece, then sat heavily down, and in a querulous voice demanded coffee.  Colonel Dick wore a frown.  Deb, who before breakfast had visited a new foal in the long pasture, kept for a time the ball of conversation rolling; but the dulness and the chill in the air presently enwrapped her also.  The meal came to an end with only one hazard as to what could have taken Ludwell Cary to Greenwood for the entire day.  That was Unity’s, who remarked that pains must be bestowed upon the hanging of a drawing-room paper, else the shepherds and the shepherdesses would not match.