“Ah, let me speak! I want to tell you that I shall carry the memory of that afternoon, and of your brave kindness, always, always! If I were [Pg 266]never to see you again in this life, I should always treasure it. If I died of thirst in some Sahara, it would be the last thing I should remember—your face would be the last thing I should see! If I—” He paused, his veins beating hard under the savage self-repression, his hand trembling against the stone, his voice a traitor, yielding to something that rose in his throat to choke the stumbling words. In the silence there was the sound of a slow footfall on the gravel walk, and at the same moment he saw a magical change. Shirley drew back. The soft gentian blue of her eyes darkened. The lips that an instant before had been tremulous, parted in a low delicious laugh. She swept him a deep curtsey. “I am beholden to you, sir,” she said gaily, “for a most knightly compliment. There’s the major. Come and let us show him where we’ve planted the ramblers.” [Pg 267] CHAPTER XXXI TOURNAMENT DAY The noon sun of tournament day shone brilliantly over the village, drowsy no longer, for many vehicles were hitched at the curb, or moved leisurely along the leafy street: big, canvas-topped country wagons drawn by shaggy-hoofed horses and set with chairs that had bumped and jostled their holiday loads from outlying tobacco plantation and stud-farm; sober, black-covered buggies, long, narrow, springless buckboards, frivolous side-bar runabouts and antique shays resurrected from the primeval depths of cobwebbed stables, relics of tarnished grandeur and faded fortune. Here and there a motor crept, a bilious and replete beetle among insects of wider wing. Knots of high-booted men conversed on street corners, men hand-cuffed, it would seem, to their whips; children romped and ran hither and thither; and through all sifted a varicolored stream of negroes, male and female, good-natured and voluble. For tournament day was a county event, and the annual sport [Pg 268]of the quality had long outstripped even circus day in general popularity. At midday vehicles resolved themselves into luncheon-booths—hampers stowed away beneath the seats, disclosing all manner of picnic edibles—the court-house yard was an array of grass-spread table-cloths, and an air of plenty reigned. Within Mrs. Merryweather Mason’s brown house hospitality sat enthroned and the generous dining-room was held by a regiment of feminine out-of-town acquaintances. At intervals Aunt Charity, the cook, issued from the kitchen to peer surreptitiously through the dining-room door with vast delight. “Dey cert’n’y do take aftah dat fried chick’n,” she said to old Jereboam, who, with a half-dozen extras, had been pressed into perspiring tray-service. “Dey got all de Mefodis’ preachahs Ah evah see laid in de shade dis day. Hyuh! hyuh!” “’Deed dey has! Hyuh! hyuh!” echoed Jereboam huskily.