coming into a stranger place than
common. Have you heard the news about Unity Dandridge and Fairfax Cary?"

"Yes. She was at Roselands yesterday."

"It's good news. Unity Dandridge needs a master, and there's been no
woman at Greenwood this weary while. Ludwell Cary will never marry."

"I see nothing to prevent his marrying."

Mrs. Selden suspended the waving of her fan. "He won't. Don't dislike
him so, Lewis. It shows in your forehead."

"Is it so plain as that?" asked Rand. "Well, I do dislike him."

"Enmities are born with us, I suppose," said his visitor thoughtfully.
"I remember a man whom, without reason, I hated. Had I been a man, I
would have made it my study to quarrel with him--to force him into a
duel--to make way with him secretly if need be! I wouldn't have stopped
at murder. And it was all a mistake, as I found when he was dead and I
didn't have to walk the same earth with him any more. It's a curious
world, is the heart of man. And so you won't be Governor of Virginia?"

"Not now--some later day, perhaps. You see it takes all my time to be a
great lawyer!"

"You don't deceive me," said Mrs. Selden, with great dryness. "But good
or bad, your reason's your own, and I'll not ask you to satisfy an old
woman's curiosity. In my day it was something to be Governor of
Virginia." She waved her fan more vigorously than before, and the wind
from it blew a paper from the table beside her. She was birdlike in her
movements, and before Rand could stoop, she had caught the sheet. "Rows
and rows of figures!" she exclaimed. "Is it a sum you're doing?"

He nodded, taking it from her. "Yes; a giant of a sum," he answered
easily, and put the paper in his pocket. "Now what is old Carfax doing
on your land?"

The consultation over, Mrs. Selden left the office and was handed by
Rand into the pumpkin coach. When he had closed the door, he yet stood
beside the lowered glass, his arm, sleeved in fine green cloth, laid
along its rim, his strong face, clear cut and dark, smiling in upon his
old friend. In his mind was the long and dreary stretch of his boyhood
when she and Adam Gaudylock were the only beings towards whom he had a
friendly thought. He was one of those men whose minds still hold
communion with all the selves that they have left behind. Each in its
day had been a throbbing, vital thing, and though at times he found the
past obtrusive and wished to throw it off, he could never utterly do so.
There was for him