done nothing but sound her praises for the past two years, an excuse which carried no weight in gentleman George’s mind because of its additional familiarity.  He had never dared, he knew, to extend that familiarity to Peggy—­it had always been “Mrs. Coston” to her and it had always been “Mr. Coston” to Tom, and it was now “your Honor” or “judge” to the dispenser of justice.  For though the owner of Oak Hill lived within a few miles of the tumble-down remnant that sheltered the Costons; and though he had fifty servants to their one, or half a one—­and broad acres in proportion, to say nothing of flocks and herds—­St. George had always been aware that he seldom crossed their porch steps or they his.  That little affair of some fifty or more years ago was still remembered, and the children of people who did that sort of thing must, of course, pay the penalty.  Even Peggy never failed to draw the line.  “Very nice people, my dear,” he had heard her say to Kate one day when the subject of the younger man’s family had come up.  “Mr. Willits senior is a fine, open-hearted man, and does a great deal of good in the county with his money—­quite a politician, and they do say has a fair chance of some time being governor of the State.  But very few of us about here would want to marry into the family, all the same.  Oh no, my dear Kate, of course there was nothing against his grandmother.  She was a very nice woman, I believe, and I’ve often heard my own mother speak of her.  Her father came from Albemarle Sound, if I am right, and was old John Willits’s overseer.  The girl was his daughter.”

Kate had made no answer.  Who Langdon Willits’s grandmother was, or whether he had any grandmother at all, did not concern her in the least.  She rather admired the young Albemarle Sound girl for walking boldly into the Willits family—­low born as she was—­and making them respect her.

But none of Peggy’s outspoken warnings nor any of St. George’s silent acceptances of the several situations—­always a mark of his disapproval—­checked the game of love-making which was going on—­the give-and-take stage of it, with the odds varying with each new shifting of the cards, both Peggy and St. George growing the more nervous.

“She’s going to accept him, St. George,” Peggy had said to him one morning as he stood behind her chair while she was shelling the peas for dinner.  “I didn’t think so when he first came, but I believe it now.  I have said all I could to her.  She has cuddled up in my arms and cried herself sick over it, but she won’t hold out much longer.  Young Rutter left her heart all torn and bleeding and this man has bound up the sore places.  She will never love anybody that way again—­and may be it is just as well.  He’d have kept her guessing all her life as to what he’d do next.  I wish Willits’s blood was better, for she’s a dear, sweet child and proud as she can be, only she’s proud over different things from what I would be.  But you can make up your mind to it—­she’ll keep him dangling for a while yet, as she did last summer at the Red Sulphur, but she’ll be his wife in a year or less—­you mark my words.  You haven’t yet heard from the first one, have you?—­as to when he’s coming home?”