“I did not know you were there,” she exclaimed.  “I thought the room was empty.  What are you reading?”

“A Treatise on Hospitality,” answered Major Churchill, with great dryness.  “I suppose Dick is making posset in his best racing cup?  How is the interesting patient?”

Jacqueline coloured.  “Uncle Dick—­”

“Uncle Dick,” interrupted the Major, “is the best of fellows, but he is not perspicacious.  I am, and I say again, why the deuce did this damned Republican get himself thrown at our very gates?  In my day a horse might act a little gaily, but a man kept his seat!”

Jacqueline coloured more deeply.  “It was that bad place on the hill road.  I do not suppose that Mr. Rand is a poor horseman.”

“Who said that he was?” demanded the Major testily.  “A poor horseman!  He and his old wolf of a father used to break all the colts for twenty miles round!  That place in the road!  Pshaw!  I’ve ridden by that place in the road for forty years, but I never had the indecency to be brought on a litter into a gentleman’s house who was not of my way of thinking!  And every man and woman on the place—­barring poor Nancy—­out to receive him!  I am not at home among fools, so I came here—­though the Lord knows there’s many a fool to be found in a library!—­Well, are any bones broken?”

“Dr. Gilmer will tell us—­oh, he looked like death!”

“Who?—­William Gilmer?” demanded Uncle Edward with asperity.  “Your pronoun ‘he’ stands for your antecedent ‘Gilmer.’  But what’s the English tongue when we have a Jacobin in the house!  Women like strange animals, and they are vastly fond of pitying.  But you were always a home body, Jacqueline, and left Unity to run after the sea lions and learned pigs!  And now you sit there as white as your gown!”

Jacqueline smiled.  “Perhaps I am of those who pity.  I hear a horse upon the road!  It may be Dr. Gilmer!” and up she started.

“The horse has gone by,” said Uncle Edward.  “Gilmer cannot possibly be here for an hour.  Sit down, child, and don’t waste your pity.  The Rands are used to hard knocks.  I’ve seen old Gideon in the ring, black and blue and blind with blood, demanding proof that he was beaten.  The gentleman upstairs will take care of himself.  Bah!—­Where is Ludwell Cary this afternoon?”

“He rode, I think, to Charlottesville.”

“You think!  Don’t you know?—­What woman was ever straightforward!”

Major Churchill opened his book, looked at it, and tossed it aside; took The Virginia Federalist from the table, and for perhaps sixty seconds appeared absorbed in its contents, then with a loud “Pshaw!” threw it down, and rising walked to a bookcase.  “I am reading Swift,” he said, and brought a calf-bound volume to the window.  “There was a man who knew hatred and the risus sardonicus!  Listen to this, Jacqueline.”

Major Churchill read well, and it was his habit to read aloud to Jacqueline, whose habit it was to listen.  Now she sat before the window, in the old leather chair, her slender face and form in profile, and her eyes upon the sunset sky.  It was her accustomed attitude, and Uncle Edward read on with growing satisfaction, finding that he was upon a passage which gave Democracy its due.  He turned a page, then another, glanced from the book, and discovered that his niece was not attending.  “Jacqueline!”