Fairfax Cary asked after Lewis Rand and his broken arm, and Colonel Dick responded with absent-mindedness that the arm did very well, and that its owner would soon be going about his business with all the rest of the damned Republican mischief-makers:  then, “Scipio, did you take that julep and bird up to the blue room?”

“Yaas, marster,” answered Scipio.  “The gent’man say tell you ’Thank you.’  He say he ain’t gwine trouble you much longer, an’ he cyarn never forgit what Fontenoy’s done fer him.”

“Deb!” said Uncle Edward, with great sharpness, “you are spilling that cup of milk.  Look what you are doing, child!”

The uncomfortable meal came to an end.  Outside the dining-room door Uncle Dick mentioned to Unity that her aunt wanted her in the chamber to cut off linsey gowns for the house servants, and Uncle Edward inquired if it would be troublesome to Fairfax Cary to ride over to Tom Wood’s and take a look at that black stallion Tom bragged of.  Unity went to her aunt’s chamber; the younger Cary walked away somewhat stiffly to the stables; Uncle Edward sent Deb to her lessons, and Uncle Dick told Jacqueline to come in half an hour to the library.  Edward and he wanted to speak to her.

Jacqueline gave her directions, or her aunt’s directions, to Scipio, then crossed the paved way to the kitchen and talked of dinner and supper with the turbaned cook; opened with her keys the smokehouse door, and in the storeroom superintended the weighing of flour and sugar and the measuring of Java coffee, and finally saw that the drawing-room was properly darkened against the sunny morning, and that the water was fresh in the bowls of flowers.  She leaned for a moment against her harp, one hand upon its strings, her forehead resting upon her bare arm; then she turned from the room and entered the library, where she found her uncles waiting for her, Uncle Dick upon the hearth rug and Uncle Edward at the table.

“Jacqueline,” began the first, then, “Edward, I never could talk to a woman!  Ask her what all this damned nonsense means!”

“Your uncle doesn’t mean that it is all damned nonsense, Jacqueline,” said Uncle Edward, with gentleness.  “Not perhaps from your point of view, my dear.  But both he and I are greatly grieved and disappointed—­”

“It was all arranged ages ago!” broke in the elder brother.  “Fauquier Cary and your dear father, my brother Henry, settled it when you were born and Fauquier’s son was a lad at Maury’s school!  When Henry died, and Fauquier Cary died, my brother Edward here and I said to each other that we would see the matter out!  So we will, by God!”

“Gently, Dick!  Jacqueline, child, you know how dear you are to us, and how the future and the happiness of you and of Unity and of Deb is our jealous care—­”

“Fauquier Cary was as noble a man as ever breathed,” cried the other, “and his son’s his image!  There’s no better blood in Virginia—­and the land beside—­”