"I'm glad all the time," said Fairfax Cary. "Don't dwell on lost battles. Unity, when are you going to let me fight all your battles?" "I don't know," answered Miss Dandridge promptly. "I don't even know that I would like to have all my battles fought for me. I'm not lazy, and I believe my ancestors fought their own. Besides--would you fight this one?" There was a pause; then, "Do you love your cousin so?" asked the young man. "Love Jacqueline? Jacqueline is like my sister. If she is not happy, then neither am I!" "But she is happy. She loved Lewis Rand, and she married him." "Yes, yes. But a woman may marry her lover and yet be unhappy. If he takes her to a strange country, she may perish of homesickness." "Has he taken her to a strange country?" "Yes," cried Unity, with fire. "How can it but be a strange country?" Her eyes filled with tears. "Why, why did she not love your brother!" "That," said the younger Cary grimly, "is what I do not profess to understand. And I would fight for your cousin, but I will not fight for Lewis Rand. My brother's enemies are mine." "You see. You wouldn't fight this battle, after all." "Would Miss Dandridge wish me to?" Unity regarded the sunset beyond the snowball bushes. "No," she said at last, with a sigh and a shake of her head, "no, I wouldn't. I had rather a man behaved like a man than like an angel." "You are the angel. At least your cousin will not live much longer in that log house, with the pines and the tobacco and the ghost of old Gideon. Lewis Rand has bought Roselands." "Roselands!" "You knew it was for sale. Well, he's bought it. I had the news from the agent. It's to be put in order this winter, and in the spring Rand will come back from Richmond and take possession. It is strange to think of a Rand owning Roselands!" "A Churchill will own it, too! It will have been bought with Churchill money. I am so glad! It can be made a lovely place. Jacqueline will have the garden and the old, long drawing-room! Deb and I can go there easily. It is all more fitting--I am glad!" "It is too near Greenwood," said the other gloomily. "I think that Ludwell will stay in Richmond." "I'm sorry," said Unity softly and brightly. "I wish, I wish--but what's the use in wishing? There! the sun has gone, and it is growing cold. I have sat here until I'm no longer angry with Uncle Edward. Poor man! to be reading Swift all this time!--I'll walk with you to the front porch." "I thought," ventured the young man, "I thought that perhaps you might ask me to stay to supper. It's so lonely at Greenwood." "You stayed to supper last night," said Miss Dandridge pensively, "and you were here to dinner the day before, and you rode over the preceding afternoon, and the morning before that you read me Vathek.--Oh, stay to supper by all means!"