“You say that,” cried Unity, turning on him, “because you are a Federalist!  Well, women are neither Federalists nor Republicans!  They have no party and no soul of their own!  They are just what the person they love is—­”

“That’s not so,” said Cary.

“Oh, I know it’s not so!” agreed Miss Dandridge, with impatience.  “It’s just one of those things that are said!  But it remains that Jacqueline must be happy.  I’ll break my heart if she’s not!  And as long as I live, I’ll say that Uncle Dick and Uncle Edward are to blame—­”

“Where are they?”

“Oh, Uncle Dick is in the long field watching the threshing, and Uncle Edward is in the library reading Swift!  And Aunt Nancy has ordered black scarfs to be put above the pictures of Uncle Henry and of Great-Aunt Jacqueline that Jacqueline’s named for.  Oh, oh!”

“And Deb?” asked the young man gently.

“Deb is at Cousin Jane Selden’s.  She has been there with Jacqueline a week—­she and Miranda.  Oh, I know—­Uncle Dick is a just man!  He does what he thinks is the just thing.  Deb shall go visit her sister—­every now and then!  And all that Uncle Henry left Jacqueline goes with her—­there are slaves and furniture and plate, and she has money, too.  The Rands don’t usually marry so well—­There!  I, too, am bitter!  But Uncle Dick swears that he will never see Jacqueline again—­and all the Churchills keep their word.  Oh, family quarrels!  Deb’s coming back to Fontenoy to-morrow—­poor little chick!  Aunt Nancy’s got to have those mourning scarfs taken away before she comes!”

Miss Dandridge descended the porch steps to the waiting coach.  The younger Cary handed her in with great care of her flowers and gauzy draperies, and great reluctance in relinquishing her hand.  “I may come too?” he asked, “just as far as the old Greenwood road?  I hate to see you go alone.”

“Oh, yes, yes!” answered Miss Dandridge absently, and, sinking into a corner, regarded through the window the July morning.  “Those black scarfs hurt me,” she said, and the July morning grew misty.  “It’s not death to marry the man one loves!”

The coach rolled down the drive to the gate, and out upon the sunny road.  The dust rose in clouds, whitening the elder, the stickweed, and the blackberry bushes.  The locusts shrilled in the parching trees.  The sky was cloudless and intensely blue, marked only by the slow circling of a buzzard far above the pine-tops.  There were many pines, and the heat drew out their fragrance, sharp and strong.  The moss that thatched the red banks was burned, and all the ferns were shrivelling up.  Everywhere butterflies fluttered, lizards basked in the sun, and the stridulation of innumerable insects vexed the ear.  The way was long, and the coach lumbered heavily through the July weather.  “I do not want to talk,” sighed Unity.  “My heart is too heavy.”

“My own is not light,” said Cary grimly.  “I am sorry for my brother.”