“Now, Mr. Shapleigh, how silly you talk! Of course they couldn’t have planned it before Elizabeth was born. But it does seem a hard case that Richard Skelton should be carried off right under our noses, and Sylvia here quite ten years old, and I with my heart set on seeing her Mrs. Skelton, of Deerchase. But those Armisteads are a designing pack. You may take my word for it.” “I do, my life, I do,” cried old Tom with a wink. Meanwhile there was no doubt that young Skelton was indeed violently in love with his cousin Elizabeth. It was his first passion, and he pursued it with an indescribable fierceness. Elizabeth, who had both beauty and spirit, was a little frightened at the intensity of his love and jealousy. She had been engaged to Jack Blair, of Newington, who was accounted a good match and was a gallant, lovable fellow enough, but, dazzled by Skelton’s personality and position and money, and beset by her family, she threw her lover over. They had one last interview, when Blair left her weeping and wringing her hands, while he threw himself on his horse and galloped home with a face as black as midnight. Elizabeth could not quite forget Blair, and Skelton was too subtle not to see it. He lavished contempt on Blair, calling him a great hulking country squire, who cared for nothing but a screeching run after the hounds or a roaring flirtation with a pretty girl. He quite overlooked a certain quality of attraction about Blair which made women love him, children fondle him, and dogs fawn upon him. Skelton waked up to it, though, one fine morning, when he found that Elizabeth and Blair had decamped during the night and were then on their way to North Carolina to be married. How Skelton took it nobody knew. He shut himself up in the library at Deerchase, and no one dared to come near him except Bob Skinny, who would tiptoe softly to the door once in a while with a tray and something to eat. There was a feeling in the county as if Abingdon Church had suddenly tumbled down, or the river had all at once turned backwards, when it was known that Richard Skelton had been actually and ignominiously jilted. Mrs. Shapleigh had a good heart, and, in spite of her plans for Sylvia, felt sorry for Skelton. “Do, Mr. Shapleigh,” she pleaded, “go over and see poor Richard Skelton, and tell him there’s as good fish in the sea as ever were caught.” “Zounds, madam,” answered old Tom, with energy, “I’m no poltroon, but I wouldn’t trust myself in the Deerchase library with that message for ten thousand dollars! He’d murder me. You’d be a widow, ma’am, as sure as shooting.” “Well, Mr. Shapleigh, I hope, if I ever am a widow, I shall submit cheerfully to the Lord’s will; and I shall have as handsome a monument put up over you as there is in the county.” “And I’ll do the same by you, my dear, if you should precede me. I’ll have one big enough to put on it the longest epitaph you ever saw; and I’ll tell my second wife every day of the virtues of my first.”