Staring through the unwashed window-pane, moodily brooding on what I had learned, I followed impatiently the flight of those small, gray swallows of the North, colorless as shadows, whirling in spirals above the cold chimneys, to tumble in like flakes of gray soot only to drift out again, wind—­blown, aimless, irrational, senseless things.  And again that hatred seized me for all this pale Northern world, where the very birds gyrated like moon-smitten sprites, and the white spectre of virtue sat amid orgies where bloodless fools caroused.

“Are you homesick, cousin?” she asked.

“Ay—­if you must know the truth!” I broke out, not meaning to say my fill and ease me.  “This is not the world; it is a gray inferno, where shades rave without reason, where there is no color, no repose, nothing but blankness and unreason, and an air that stings all living life to spasms of unrest.  Your sun is hot, yet has no balm; your winds plague the skin and bones of a man; the forests are unfriendly; the waters all hurry as though bewitched!  Brooks are cold and tasteless as the fog; the unsalted, spiceless air clogs the throat and whips the nerves till the very soul in the body strains, fluttering to be free!  How can decent folk abide here?”

I hesitated, then broke into a harsh laugh, for my cousin sat staring at me, lips parted, like a fair shape struck into marble by a breath of magic.

“Pardon,” I said.  “Here am I, kindly invited to the council of a family whose interests lie scattered through estates from the West Indies to the Canadas, and I requite your hospitality by a rudeness I had not believed was in me.”

I asked her pardon again for the petty outburst of an untravelled youngster whose first bath in this Northern air-ocean had chilled his senses and his courtesy.

“There is a land,” I said, “where lately the gray bastions of St. Augustine reflected the gold and red of Spanish banners, and the blue sea mirrors a bluer sky.  We Ormonds came there from the Western Indies, then drifted south, skirting the Matanzas to the sea islands on the Halifax, where I was born, an Englishman on Spanish soil, and have lived there, knowing no land but that of Florida, treading no city streets save those walled lanes of ancient Augustine.  All this vast North is new to me, Dorothy; and, like our swamp-haunting Seminoles, my rustic’s instinct finds hostility in what is new and strange, and I forget my breeding in this gray maze which half confuses, half alarms me.”

“I am not offended,” she said, smiling, “only I wonder what you find distasteful here.  Is it the solitude?”

“No, for we also have that.”

“Is it us?”

“Not you, Dorothy, nor yet Ruyven, nor the others.  Forget what I said.  As the Spaniards have it, ‘Only a fool goes travelling,’ and I’m not too notorious for my wisdom, even in Augustine.  If it be the custom of the people here to go mad, I’ll not sit in a corner croaking, ’Repent and be wise!’ If the Varicks and the Butlers set the pace, I promise you to keep the quarry, Mistress Folly, in view—­perhaps outfoot you all to Bedlam!...  But, cousin, if you, too, run this uncoupled race with the pack, I mean to pace you, neck and neck, like a keen whip, ready to turn and lash the first who interferes with you.”