The brothers sat heavily on in the sunshine-flooded library, the elder
red and fuming, the younger silent and saturnine. At last Colonel Dick
broke out, "What the devil ails her, Edward? Every decent young fellow
in the county comes to Fontenoy straight as a bee to the honey-pot! I've
heard them sighing for her and Unity, but I never could see that she
favoured one man more than another,--and she's no coquette like Unity!
Except for that fine blush of hers, I'd never have thought. What do you
think, Edward?"

"The ways of women are past my finding out," said Edward. "Let it rest
for a while, Dick." He rose from his chair stiffly, like an old man.
"Let Cary go home to-morrow as he intends. 'Absence makes the heart grow
fonder,' they say. She may find that she misses him, and may look for
him when he comes riding over. Never fear but he'll ride over often! He
mustn't guess, of course, that you have spoken to her. And that's all we
can do, Dick, except--" Major Edward walked stiffly across the floor and
paused before the portrait of his brother Henry, dead and gone these
many years. The face looked imperiously down upon him. Henry had stood
for something before he died,--for grace and manly beauty, pride and
fire. The Major's eyes suddenly smarted. "Poor white trash," he said
between his teeth, "and Henry's daughter!" He turned and came back to
the table. "Dick! just as soon as you can, you clear the house of old
Gideon Rand's son!"

"What's he got to do with it?" asked Colonel Dick.

"I don't know," said the other. "But I want him out of the blue room,
and out of Fontenoy! and now, Dick, I've got a piece to write this
morning on the designs of Aaron Burr."