“What has all your family pride brought you, all your planning and manoeuvring, you dull countrymen? _I_ wasn’t good enough for you, eh? Your breed must conspire against me, eh? and treat me like an interloper, an outsider, eh? You thought I was to be brought here too, did you, when my time arrived, and be snubbed and bullied into some back corner like the rest of your wives, while my husband, ‘the Congressman,’ had a big monument like this of your old humbug, the Senator? And you expected to patronize me, or cut me dead, as the living dolts here on the turnpike have done, did you? Well, you are fooled! I’ve escaped you! I shall never come here but once again--to bring you your ‘Congressman.’ You can have him and welcome. And that old cat of an aunt of his, she will come presently, too, and I wish you much joy of _her!_ And perhaps you will give up your idea, then, that you amount to anything, or ever will amount to anything. The farm is going to a young man who will sell it, and who doesn’t care a cent for the whole crowd of you, and who will live in a city, and eat with his fork, and forget that there ever were such people as you. And he will forget, too, that----” She came to a full stop in her meditations. Yes, Seth would forget her, too. She had no illusions on this point. Perhaps this was too kindly a view of it, even--he might be compelled to remember her by sheer force of his bitterness toward her. There could be no doubt, after his cruel words on the eventful forenoon--their last meeting--that he scorned and despised her. What an idiot she had been to disclose to him her thoughts--those mad fancies and beliefs of that frantic morning! She might have known that the idea of his fighting his brother, on _her_ account, was preposterous. What did he care about her? He had been nice with her, had written her pretty, graceful letters when she asked him to do so, and had sent her books to read--that was all. There was nothing else. She had been a fool to dream that there was anything else. He would sell the farm, and go back to Tecumseh, and marry Annie--yes, marry Annie! And they, too, would refer to her now and then, and comment on her wickedness, and hope that they might never have a daughter like her. That would be all. She turned from the little enclosure of graves, without giving them another thought. The mental picture which she conjured up of the young couple, contented by a fireside of their own, perhaps with a child, tore at her heart-strings. In the farm-yard she was met by Mr. Ansdell, who was evidently watching for her, and who introduced himself courteously.