Miss Dandridge descended the porch steps to the waiting coach. The younger Cary handed her in with great care of her flowers and gauzy draperies, and great reluctance in relinquishing her hand. "I may come too?" he asked, "just as far as the old Greenwood road? I hate to see you go alone." "Oh, yes, yes!" answered Miss Dandridge absently, and, sinking into a corner, regarded through the window the July morning. "Those black scarfs hurt me," she said, and the July morning grew misty. "It's not death to marry the man one loves!" The coach rolled down the drive to the gate, and out upon the sunny road. The dust rose in clouds, whitening the elder, the stickweed, and the blackberry bushes. The locusts shrilled in the parching trees. The sky was cloudless and intensely blue, marked only by the slow circling of a buzzard far above the pine-tops. There were many pines, and the heat drew out their fragrance, sharp and strong. The moss that thatched the red banks was burned, and all the ferns were shrivelling up. Everywhere butterflies fluttered, lizards basked in the sun, and the stridulation of innumerable insects vexed the ear. The way was long, and the coach lumbered heavily through the July weather. "I do not want to talk," sighed Unity. "My heart is too heavy." "My own is not light," said Cary grimly. "I am sorry for my brother." "We are all sorry for your brother," Unity answered gently, and then would speak no more, but sat in her silver and roses, looking out into the heat and light. The Greenwood road was reached in silence. Cary put his head out of the window and called to old Philip. The coach came slowly to a stop before a five-barred gate. Mingo opened the door, and the young man got out. "Unless you think I might go with you as far as the church--" he suggested, with his hand on the door. Unity shook her head. "You can't do that, you know! Besides, I am going first to Cousin Jane Selden's. Good-bye. Oh, it is going to be a happy marriage--it must be happy!" "What is going to make it happy?" demanded Cary gloomily. "It's a match against nature! When I think of your cousin in that old whitewashed house, and every night Gideon Rand's ghost making tobacco around it! I am glad that Ludwell has gone to Richmond. He looks like a ghost himself." "Oh, the world!" sighed Unity. "Tell Philip, please, to drive on." "I'll ride over to Fontenoy to-morrow," said Fairfax Cary. "'Twill do you good to talk it over."