Southern States -- History -- 1865-1877 -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
"Tell me where your old home is," she said presently, after a long pause
in which her face had grown thoughtful. "You told me once that you could
see it from this rock."
Keith pointed to a spot on the far horizon. He did not know that it was
to see this even more than to brave him that she had climbed to the top
of the rock.
"Now tell me about it," she said. "Tell me all over what you have told
me before." And Keith related all he could remember. Touched with her
sympathy, he told it with more feeling than he had ever shown before.
When he spoke of the loss of his home, of his mortification, and of his
father's quiet dignity, she turned her face away to keep him from seeing
the tears that were in her eyes.
"I can understand your feeling a little," she said presently; "but I did
not know that any one could have so much feeling for a plantation. I
suppose it is because it is in the country, with its trees and flowers
and little streams. We have had three houses since I can remember. The
one that we have now on Fifth Avenue is four times as large--yes, six
times as large--and a hundred times as fine as the one I can first
remember, and yet, somehow, I always think, when I am sad or lonely, of
the little white house with the tiny rooms in it, with their low
ceilings and small windows, where I used to go when I was a very little
girl to see my father's mother. Mamma does not care for it; she was
brought up in the city; but I think my father loves it just as I do. He
always says he is going to buy it back, and I am going to make him
do it."
"I am going to buy back mine some day," said Keith, very slowly.
She glanced at him. His eyes were fastened on the far-off horizon, and
there was that in his face which she had never seen there before, and
which made her admire him more than she had ever done.
"I hope you will," she said. She almost hated Ferdy Wickersham for
having spoken of the place as Keith told her he had spoken.
When Keith reached home that evening he had a wholly new feeling for the
girl with whom accident had so curiously thrown him. He was really in
love with her. Hitherto he had allowed himself merely to drift with the
pleasant tide that had been setting in throughout these last weeks. But
the phases that she had shown that afternoon, her spirit, her courage,
her capricious rebelliousness, and, above all, that glimpse into her
heart which he had obtained as she sat on the rock overlooking the wide
sweep where he had had his home, and where the civilization to which it
belonged had had its home, had shown him a new creature, and he plunged
into love. Life appeared suddenly to open wide her gates and flood him
with her rosy light.
CHAPTER IX
MR. KEITH IS UNPRACTICAL, AND MRS. YORKE GIVES HIM GOOD ADVICE
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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