ng--and in love." She turned and took up her
gloves from the dressing-table. "I have had a letter from Ludwell Cary,"
she said, then spoke over her shoulder with sudden lire. "He is the only
one of all I know, the only one of all my people, who has been generous
enough, and just enough, to praise the man I marry!"

"Oh, Jacqueline!" cried Unity, "I will praise him to the skies, if only
he will make you happy! Does not every one say that he has a great
future? and surely he deserves all credit for rising as he has done--and
he is most able--"

"And _good_," said Jacqueline proudly. "Don't praise him any more,
Unity." She put her hands on her cousin's shoulders and kissed her
lightly on the forehead. "Now and then, my dear, will you come to see me
on the Three-Notched Road? I shall have Deb one week out of six."

"I shall come," answered Unity. "Where is Deb?"

"She is asleep. She cried herself to sleep."

"Chillern cry jes' fer nothin' at all," put in Mammy Chloe. "Don' you
worry, honey! Miss Deb's all right. I's gwine wake her now, an' wash her
face, an' slip on her li'l white dress. She's gwine be jes' ez peart an'
ez happy! My Lawd! Miss Deb jes' gainin' a brother!"

"Jacqueline," came Cousin Jane Selden's voice at the door. "It is almost
time."

The coach of the day was an ark in capacity, and woman's dress as
sheathlike as a candle flame. Jacqueline, Unity, Deb, Cousin Jane
Selden, and a burly genial gentleman of wide family connections and
Republican tenets travelled to church in the same vehicle and were not
crowded. The coach was Cousin Jane Selden's; the gentleman was of some
remote kinship, and had been Henry Churchill's schoolmate, and he was
going to give Jacqueline away. He talked to Cousin Jane Selden about the
possibilities of olive culture, and he showed Deb a golden turnip of a
watch with jingling seals. Jacqueline and Unity sat in silence,
Jacqueline's arm around Deb. Behind their coach came the small party
gathered at Mrs. Selden's. The church was three miles down the road. It
was now afternoon, and the heat lay like a veil upon wood and field and
the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge. The dust rose behind the carriage,
then sank upon and further whitened the milkweed and the love vine and
the papaw bushes. The blaze of light, the incessant shrilling of the
locusts, the shadeless pines, the drouth, the long, dusty road--all
made, thought Unity, a dry and fierce monotony that seared the eyes and
weig