Had men called him ambitious, he would have smiled, and felt truly that
they had bungled in the word. Such and such things were simply his
appurtenances; in London, the regard due to a gentleman who to a certain
distinction in his manner of amusing himself added the achievement of a
successful comedy, three lampoons quoted at all London tea-tables, and a
piece of Whig invective, so able, stern, and sustained that many cried
that the Dean had met his match; in Virginia, the deferential esteem of
the colony at large, a place in the Council, and a great estate. An
alliance with the master of Westover was in itself a desirable thing,
advantageous to purse and to credit; his house must have a mistress, and
that mistress must please at every point his fastidious taste.

What better to do than to give it for Mistress Evelyn Byrd? Evelyn, who
had had for all her suitors only a slow smile and shake of the head;
Evelyn, who was older than her years; Evelyn, who was his friend as he was
hers. Love! He had left that land behind, and she had never touched its
shores; the geography of the poets to the contrary, it did not lie in the
course of all who passed through life. He made his suit, and now he had
his answer.

If he did not take trouble to wonder at her confession, or to modestly ask
himself how he had deserved her love, neither did he insult her with pity
or with any lightness of thought. Nor was he ready to believe that his
rejection was final. Apparently indifferent as he was, it was yet his way
to move steadily and relentlessly, if very quietly, toward what goal he
desired to reach. He thought that Fair View might yet call Evelyn Byrd its
mistress.

Since turning into the crossroad that, running south and east, would take
him back to the banks of the James and to his own house, he had not