deed if he were not touched
and gratified, and did not accept with eagerness such an overture. But,
sir, but! There is more, I think, in your visit to-night than meets the
eye. You demand that I shall become my party's candidate for the
governorship. I answer it is not now possible. You insist that I shall
busy myself with improvements here at Roselands, and to that end you
offer to reinforce my purse. I answer that Roselands does very well, and
that I am not in need of money. You preach to me patriotism and refer to
General Washington; you speak poetically of gold _versus_ pinchbeck, and
true glory _versus_ fame with drenched wings; you ask me certain
questions in a voice that has hardly the ring of friendship--and last
but not least you wish to know if a parcel of land that I have bought
over the mountains is situate upon the Washita! The Washita, Major
Churchill, is on the far side of the Mississippi, in Spanish Territory.
May I ask, sir, before I withdraw my welcome to Roselands, by what right
you are entitled to put such a question to me, and what is, indeed, the
purport of your visit here to-night?"

Major Edward Churchill rose, stark and grey, with narrowed eyes and
deliberating, pointing hand. "You are a villain, sir; yes, sir, a
damned, skilled, heart-breaking villain! Bold! yes, you are bold--bold
as others of your tribe of whom the mythologies tell! Arrogant as
Lucifer, you are more wretched than the slave in your fields! You might
have been upon the side of light; you have chosen darkness. It will
swallow you up, and I, for one, shall say, 'The night hath its own.' You
have chosen wrongly where you might have chosen rightly, and you have
not done so in blind passion but in cold blood, fully and freely, under
whatever monstrous light it is by which you think you walk! I have
warned you of the gulf, and I have warned in vain. So be it! But do not
think, sir, do not think that you will be allowed to drag with you, down
into the darkness, the woman whom you have married! I wish that my niece
had died before she saw your face! Do you know what she thinks you, sir?
She thinks you a lover so devoted that at her pleading you put forever
from you a gilded lure; a gentleman so absolutely of your word that for
her to doubt it would be the blackest treason; a statesman and a patriot
who will yet nobly serve Virginia and the country! God knows what she
doesn't think you--the misguided child! She's happy to-night, at
Font