"By all the laws of inference," his mother returned, with an answering
gleam in her eye.

"There seems to have been a Celtic invasion of the Carolinas during my
absence. Has he a family?"

"Only a daughter." And as Frank turned to leave her Mrs. Ravenel asked,
lightly: "How long do you intend to stay here, Frank?"

"I have made no plans," he answered; but going down the carriageway he
said to himself, with a smile: "Mother shows her hand too plainly. The
girl is evidently young and pretty."

The plantation had never seemed so beautiful to him. The wild roses were
in bloom; the fringe-trees and dogwood hung white along the riverbanks;
the golden azaleas, nodding wake-robins, and muskadine flowers looked up
at them from below, while the cotton spread its green tufts miles and
miles away to a sunlit horizon.

Swinging along the road outside the park, the half-formed plan to visit
the overseer left him, and purposeless he climbed the hill to Chestnut
Ridge. Something in the occasion of his home-coming after a two years'
absence--his mother's reference to his marriage, his remembrances of
Anne Lennox--had brought back to his face its habitual expression of
sadness. And more than he would have acknowledged was a disquietude
caused by his instant resentment of the existence of Dermott McDermott.
Never in his life had he felt more strongly the need for companionship.
He had been loved by many women. He had never been believed in by any.

Passionate, proud, intolerant, full of prejudice, conscious by