"By all the laws of inference," his mother returned, with an answering gleam in her eye. "There seems to have been a Celtic invasion of the Carolinas during my absence. Has he a family?" "Only a daughter." And as Frank turned to leave her Mrs. Ravenel asked, lightly: "How long do you intend to stay here, Frank?" "I have made no plans," he answered; but going down the carriageway he said to himself, with a smile: "Mother shows her hand too plainly. The girl is evidently young and pretty." The plantation had never seemed so beautiful to him. The wild roses were in bloom; the fringe-trees and dogwood hung white along the riverbanks; the golden azaleas, nodding wake-robins, and muskadine flowers looked up at them from below, while the cotton spread its green tufts miles and miles away to a sunlit horizon. Swinging along the road outside the park, the half-formed plan to visit the overseer left him, and purposeless he climbed the hill to Chestnut Ridge. Something in the occasion of his home-coming after a two years' absence--his mother's reference to his marriage, his remembrances of Anne Lennox--had brought back to his face its habitual expression of sadness. And more than he would have acknowledged was a disquietude caused by his instant resentment of the existence of Dermott McDermott. Never in his life had he felt more strongly the need for companionship. He had been loved by many women. He had never been believed in by any. Passionate, proud, intolerant, full of prejudice, conscious by twenty-six years' experience of a most magnetic power with women, he came to the edge of the far wood as lawless a man, in as lawless a mood, as the Carolinas had ever seen--a locality where lawless men have not been wanting. Suddenly, through the twilight, he heard a voice--a woman's voice--singing, and by instinct he knew that the singer was alone and conscious of nothing save the song. At the top of the rise, under a group of beeches, with both arms stretched along a bar fence, a girl stood, the black of her hair in silhouette against the gold of the sky. He noted the slender grace of her body as she leaned backward, and listened to her voice, Heaven-given, vibrant, caressing--_juste_, as the French have it--singing an old song. He had heard it hundreds of times cheapened by lack of temperament, lack of voice, lack of taste; but as he listened, though little versed in music, he knew that it was a great voice that sang it and a great personality which interpreted it. With the song still trembling through the silence the singer turned toward him, and, man of the world and many loves as he had been, an unknown feeling came at sight of her.