Unity glanced from the card-table. "Sing again, Jacqueline, do! Sing something peaceful," and Jacqueline, still with a colour and with shining eyes, laughed, struck a sounding chord, and in her noble contralto sang Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled. CHAPTER XI IN THE GARDEN In the forenoon of the next day Rand closed, for the second time that morning, the door of the blue room behind him, descended the stairs, and, passing through the quiet house, went out into the flower garden. He was going away that afternoon. Breakfast had been taken in his own room, but afterward, with some dubitation, he had gone downstairs. There Colonel Churchill met him heartily enough, but presently business with his overseer had taken the Colonel away. Rand found himself cornered by Major Edward and drawn into a discussion of the impeachment of Judge Chase. Rand could be moved to the blackest rage, but he had no surface irritability of temper. To his antagonists his self-command was often maddening. Major Churchill was as disputatious as Arthur Lee, and an adept at a quarrel, but the talk of the impeachment went tamely on. The Republican would not fight at Fontenoy, and at last the Major in a cold rage went away to the library--first, however, watching the young man well on his way up the stairs and toward the blue room. But Rand had not stayed in the blue room. Restless and unhappy, the garden, viewed through his window, invited him. He thought: "I'll walk in it once again; I'll find the summer-house where I sat beside her," and he had acted upon his impulse. No one was about. Within and without, the house seemed lapped in quiet. He had been given to understand that the ladies were busy with household matters, and he believed the Carys to have ridden to Greenwood. That afternoon he would mount Selim, and with Joab would go home to the house on the Three-Notched Road. After the rain of the night before the garden was cool and sweet. The drops yet lay on the tangle of old-fashioned flowers, on the box and honeysuckle and the broad leaves of the trees where all the birds were singing. The gravel paths were wet and shining. Rand walked slowly, here and there, between the lines of box or under arching boughs, his mind now trying to bring back the day when he had walked there as a boy, now wondering with a wistful passion if he was to leave Fontenoy without again seeing Jacqueline. He meant to leave without one word that the world might not hear, but he thought it hard that he must go without a touch of the hand, without a "From my heart I thank you for your kindness. Good-bye, good-bye!" That would not be much; Fontenoy might give him that.