Mandy Ann hesitated a moment and then said, “I’se promised never to tole you no mo’ lies, so dis is de truffe, ef I was to drap dead.  I’d like you to marry some de gemmans in Jacksonville, or some dem who comes to de Brock House, but not him downstars!”

“Why not?” Eudora asked, and there was a little sharpness in her voice.

“‘Case,” Mandy Ann began, “you as’t me, an’ fo’ de Lawd I mus’ tell de truffe.  He’s very tall an’ gran’, an’ w’ars fine close, an’ han’s is white as a cotton bat, but his eyes doan set right in his head.  They look hard, an’ not a bit smilin’, an’ he looks proud as ef he thought we was dirt, an’ dem white han’s—­I do’ know, but pears like they’d squeeze body an’ soul till you done cry wid pain.  Doan you go for to marry him, Miss Dory, will you?”

At first Mandy Ann had opened and shut her black fingers, as she showed how the stranger’s white hands would squeeze one’s body and soul; then they closed round her mistress’s arm as she said, “Doan you marry him, Miss Dory, will you?”

“No,” Eudora answered, “don’t be a silly, but go down and bring me a rose, if you can find one two-thirds open.  I wore one with this dress before and he liked it, and as’t me to give it to him.  Mebby he will now,” she thought, while waiting for Mandy Ann, who soon came back with a beautiful rose hidden under her apron.

“Strues I’m bawn, I b’lieve he’s done gone to sleep like ole Miss—­he’s settin’ thar so still,” she said.

But he was far from being asleep.  He had gone over again and again with everything within his range of vision, from the old woman nodding in her chair, to the bucket of water standing outside the door, with a gourd swimming on the top, and he was wondering at the delay, and feeling more and more that he should take Tom Hardy’s advice, when he heard steps on the stairs, which he knew were not Mandy Ann’s, and he rose to meet Eudora.

CHAPTER III

THE INTERVIEW

She was a short, slender little girl, not more than sixteen or seventeen, with a sweet face and soft brown eyes which drooped as she came forward, and then looked at him shyly through a mist of tears which she bravely kept back.

“How d’ye.  I’m so glad to see you,” she said, looking up at him with quivering lips which were so unquestionably asking for a kiss that he gave it, while her face beamed with delight at the caress, and she did not mind how cold, and stiff, and reserved he grew the next moment.

He did not like her “How d’ye,” although he knew how common a salutation it was at the South.  It savored of Mandy Ann, and her accent was like Mandy Ann’s, and her white dress instead of pleasing him filled him with disgust for himself, as he remembered when he first saw it and thought it fine.  She had worn a rose then, and he had asked her for it, and put it in his pocket, like an insane idiot, Tom had said.  She wore a rose now,