“That can never be said of you, Miss Sally,” the judge’s indolent wife responded, smiling. Though she generally bore Miss Sally’s attacks as a lady should, and felt indulgent sympathy for the migratory spinster, she sometimes allowed herself to retort. “Aunt and Miss Sally, kiss and make up,” said America, with the deliberate accent that gave weight to all her words. But without response one of the combatants sat glowering, while the other, waving a lazy fan, indicated through the window Ross Carr cantering to his appointment, man and steed moving like one, so perfect was his horsemanship. America’s mother, impatiently anxious to go on recounting to Miss Sally the silver and linen bought for America’s new home, resigned herself for a few moments. Ross Carr threw his bridle to the groom, who was walking Miss Poynton’s saddled thoroughbred. He entered the room. America gave him her hand with a light word, and he stood holding his hat, talking to her elders. It was the culminating moment of her betrothal, a dot of time separating ease and care-free thoughts from what followed. The young man chatted idly with four women, when another screamed out behind him:-- “Here it is, Ross Carr! So you’ve got to take it, and no words betwixt us--for I won’t take care of it any longer!” “Why, Miss Becky!--why, Miss Becky!” Mrs. Poynton herself ran gasping forward to interpose between such scandalous outcry and America’s lover. “Come away with me, Miss Becky, and let me help you with your baby--and don’t speak that way before the gentlemen!” A shaker bonnet fell back from the girl’s hot and furious face. She had narrow sunken temples like a hen’s. Her entire profile was chicken beaked, yet a fluff of golden down made her comely. The wrathful rings in her eyes sent out their fires toward Ross Carr. “He thinks he’s a great gentleman, and he thinks he’s going to get a great lady”-- “Becky Inchbald, sit down in that chair!” commanded America, standing at the other side of the room. Her hat and gloves and whip lay on the floor. The other women, even her mother, waited, sitting blanched. Carr remained with his hand on the back of the chair, like a frozen figure, while Becky Inchbald placed herself in it and stretched the baby across her lap. Her first courage leaving her, she began to cry. The men of the west do not cower when found out in their sins. Ross Carr stood six feet and one inch high; a handsome, light-haired Kentuckian, the man most abundant in vitality, and the best horseman in Bourbon County. A culprit waiting to be shot, he looked his death in the face, erect, but blighted through every outline. He had carried this guilt a long time, trying to shape it for disclosure; while day after day continued to separate him farther from the Ross Carr of the past, and to make more incomprehensible the deeds which he inherited from that miserable wretch.