“I will walk with you to your door,” said Fairfax Cary.

She shook her head.  “No, do not.  I am almost there.”  Then, as his intention still held, she continued in a lower voice, “I had rather be alone.  Obey me, please.”

The small discussion ended in the group of ladies and their two escorts giving Jacqueline Rand her way, and with laughing good-byes keeping to their course down the street that was now bathed in the glow of sunset.  She watched them for a moment, then turned her face toward her own house.  The distance was short, and she traversed it lightly and rapidly, glad to be alone, glad to feel upon her brow the sunset wind, and glad at the prospect of her solitary evening.  She was conscious of a strong revulsion of feeling.  The sights and the sounds of the past hours were still in mind, but all the air had changed, and was no longer fevered and boding.  She had thought too much and made too much, she told herself, of that vague and dark “It might have been.”  It was not; thank God, it was not!  And Lewis, there in Williamsburgh, walking now, perhaps, down Duke of Gloucester Street, or sitting in the Apollo room at the Raleigh,—­would she have had Lewis read her mind that day?  Generous! had she been generous—­or just?  The colour flowed over her face and throat.  “Neither just nor generous!” she cried to herself, in a passion of relief.  “I’ll go no more to that place!”

She reached her own gate, entered between the two box bushes, and mounted the steps to the honeysuckle-covered porch.  The door before her was open, and the hall, wide and cool, with the tall clock and the long sofa, the portraits on the wall and a great bowl of stock and gillyflower, brought to her senses a blissful feeling of home, of fixedness and peace.

Mammy Chloe came from the back of the house, and in her mistress’s chamber took from her her straw bonnet, gauze scarf, and filmy gloves, then brought her slippers of morocco and a thin, flowered house-dress, narrow and fine as an infant’s robe.

“Has Joab gone to the post-office?” asked Jacqueline.

“Yaas’m.  De Williamsbu’gh stage done come, fer I heah de horn more’n an hour ago.  Dar Joab now!”

Mammy Chloe put down the blue china ewer, left the room, and returned with a letter in her hand.  “Dar, now!  Marse Lewis ain’ neber gwine fergit you!  Ef de sun shine, or ef hit don’ shine, heah come de letter jes’ de same!”

Jacqueline took the letter from her.  “Yes, Mammy, yes,” she said, with a sweet and tremulous laugh.  “He’s a good master, isn’t he?”

“Lawd knows I ain’ neber had a better,” assented Mammy Chloe.  “He powerful stric’ to mek you min’, is Marse Lewis, but he am’ de kin’ what licks he lips ober de fac’ dat you is a-mindin’!  I ain’ gwine say, honey, an’ I neber is gwine say, dat he’s wuth what de Churchills is wuth, but I’s ready to survigerate dat he’s got he own wuth.  An’ ef hit’s enough fer you, chile, hit’s enough fer yo’ ole mammy.  Read yo’ letter while I puts on yo’ slippers.”