e
opportunity was suddenly offered to buy a thousand acres of excellent
wheat land adjoining, I made the purchase for him while he was at
Williamsburg, and upon my own responsibility.

This connected the plantation on the east with Singleton's. It had been
my secret hope that the two estates might one day be joined in marriage.
For of all those who came a-courting Patty, Percy was by far the best.
He was but a diffident suitor; he would sit with me on the lawn evening
after evening, when company was there, while Fotheringay and Francis
Willard made their compliments within,--silly flatteries, at which Patty
laughed.

Percy kept his hounds, and many a run we had together' in the sparkling
days that followed the busy summer, when the crops were safe in the
bottoms; or a quiet pipe and bottle in his bachelor's hall, after a
soaking on the duck points.

And this brings me to a subject on which I am loth to write. Where Mr.
Singleton was concerned, Patty, the kindest of creatures, was cruelty
itself. Once, when I had the effrontery to venture a word in his behalf,
I had been silenced so effectively as to make my ears tingle. A thousand
little signs led me to a conclusion which pained me more than I can
express. Heaven is my witness that no baser feeling leads me to hint of
it here. Every day while the garden lasted flowers were in my room, and
it was Banks who told me that she would allow no other hands than her own
to place them by my bed. He got a round rating from me for violating the
pledge of secrecy he had given her. It was Patty who made my shirts, and
on Christmas knitted me something of comfort; who stood on the
horse-block in the early morning waving after me as I rode away, and
at my coming her eyes would kindle with a light not to be mistaken.

None of these things were lost upon Percy Singleton, and I often wondered
why he did not hate me. He was of the kind that never shows a hurt.
Force of habit still sent him to Gordon's Pride, but for days he would
have nothing to say to the mistress of it, or she to him.

CHAPTER XLVII

VISITORS

It was not often that Mr. Thomas Swain honoured Gordon's Pride with his
presence. He vowed that the sober Whig company his father brought there
gave him the vapours. He snapped his fingers at the articles of the
Patriots' Association, and still had his cocked hats and his Brussels
lace and his spyglass, and his top boots when he rode abroad, like any
other Tory buck.