ise? Well, once I had mine, though 'twas not your
kind. 'Tis a pretty country, Audrey, but it's not long before they turn
you out." She laughed somewhat drearily, then in a moment turned shrew
again. "He never knew what people were saying?" she cried. "You little
fool, do you suppose he cared? 'Twas you that played your cards all wrong
with your Governor's ball last night!--setting up for a lady,
forsooth!--bringing all the town about your ears! You might have known
that he would never have taken you there in his senses. At Fair View
things went very well. He was entertained,--and I meant to see that no
harm came of it,--and Darden got his support in the vestry. For he was
bit,--there's no doubt of that,--though what he ever saw in you more than
big eyes and a brown skin, the Lord knows, not I! Only your friend!--a
fine gentleman just from London, with a whole Canterbury book of stories
about his life there, to spend a'most a summer on the road between his
plantation and a wretched glebe house because he was only your friend, and
had saved you from the Indians when you were a child, and wished to be
kind to you still! I'll tell you who did wish to be kind to you, and that
was Jean Hugon, the trader, who wanted to marry you."

Audrey rose to her feet, and moved slowly backward to the wall. Mistress
Deborah went shrilly on: "I dare swear you believe that Mr. Haward had you
in mind all the years he was gone from Virginia? Well, he didn't. He puts
you with Darden and me, and he says, 'There's the strip of Oronoko down by
the swamp,--I 've told my agent that you're to have from it so many pounds
a year;' and he sails away to London and all the fine things there, and
never thinks of you more until he comes back to Virginia and sees you last
May Day at Jamestown. Next morning he comes riding to the glebe house.
'And so,' he says to Darden, 'and so my little maid that I brought for
trophy out of the Appalachian Mountains is a woman grown? Faith, I'd quite
forgot the child; but Saunderson tells me that you have not forgot to draw
upon my Oronoko.' That's all the remembrance you were held in, Audrey."

She paused to take breath, and to look with shrewish triumph at the girl
who leaned against the wall. "I like not waking up," said Audrey to
herself. "It were easier to die. Perhaps I am dying."

"And then out he walks to find and talk to you, and in sets your pretty
summer of all play and no work!" went on the other, in a high voi