Two nights later, when he had seen his father off at the door and turned back into the great, partly lighted house, Langdon set about thinking how he could spend the evening and rid himself of the abiding sense of loneliness that had beset him. He might stroll over to Wilson’s store, but the farmers he met there would be far from congenial, for he was not popular with many of them, and unless he could meet, which was unlikely at night, some drummer who would play poker freely with the funds of the house he represented against Langdon’s ready promises to pay, his walk would be fruitless. No, he would not go to the store, he decided; and still he was in no mood, at so early an hour, for the solitude of his room or the antiquated library, from the shelves of which frowned the puritanical books of his Presbyterian ancestors. Irresolute, he had wandered to the front veranda again, and as he stood looking eastward he espied, through the trees across the fields and meadows, a light. It was Jane Hemingway’s kitchen candle, and the young man’s pulse beat more rapidly as he gazed at it. He had occasionally seen Virginia outside the house of evenings, and had stolen chats with her. Perhaps he might have such luck again. In any case, nothing would be lost in trying, and the walk would kill time. Besides, he was sure the girl was beginning to like him; she now trusted him more, and seemed always willing to talk to him. She believed he loved her; who could doubt it when he himself had been surprised at his tenderness and flights of eloquence when inspired by her rare beauty and sweetness? Sometimes he believed that his feeling for the beautiful, trustful girl was a love that would endure, but when he reflected on the difference in their stations in life he had grave and unmanly doubts. As he walked along the road, the light of Jane’s candle, like the glow of a fire-fly, intermittently appearing and disappearing ahead of him through the interstices of the trees and foliage, the memory of the gossip about his father and Ann Boyd flashed unpleasantly upon him. Was he, after all, following his parent’s early bent? Was family history repeating itself? But when the worst was said about that affair, who had been seriously injured? Certainly not the easy-going Colonel, surely not the sturdy pariah herself, who had, somehow, turned her enforced isolation to such purpose that she was rich in the world’s goods and to all appearances cared not a rap for public opinion. ———— That day had been the gloomiest in Virginia’s life. Early in the morning Jane had gone to Darley for the twentieth time to try to borrow the money with which to defray her expenses to Atlanta. She had failed again, and came home at dusk absolutely dejected.