“But I am!” she cried, and showed him a glowing face.  “I am happier than the happiest!”

The wood thinned into glades where the shadows of beech and maple were beginning to be long upon the grass; then, in the afternoon light, the coach entered open country, fields of ox-eyed daisies, and tall pine trees standing singly.

“I never came this far,” said Jacqueline.  “I never saw the house.”

“It is there where the smoke rises beyond that tobacco-field,” answered Rand.  “All the tobacco shall be changed into wheat.”

They came in sight of the house,—­a long storey-and-a-half structure of logs, with two small porches and a great earthen chimney.  Pine trees gave a scanty shade.  House and outbuildings and fencing had all been freshly whitewashed; over the porches flourished morning-glory and Madeira vines, and the little yard was bright with hollyhock and larkspur.  Jacqueline put her hand in her husband’s.  Rand bent and kissed it with something in touch and manner formal and chivalrous.  “It is a poor house for you.  Very soon I shall build you a better.”

“I want no better,” she answered.  “Have you not lived here all these years?”

“Adam called you Queen.  You should have a palace—­”

“If I am Queen, then you must be a King.  I think it is a lovely palace.  What is that tree by the gate—­all feathery pink?”

“A mimosa.  Mr. Jefferson gave it to me.  It is like you—­it does not belong on the Three-Notched Road.  It should stand in a palace garden with dim alleys, fountains, and orange groves.”  He ended in a deeper tone, “Why not?  One day we may plant a mimosa in such a garden, and smile and say, ’Do you remember the tree—­do you remember our wedding day?’ Who knows—­who knows?”

“You shall stay in that palace all alone,” said Jacqueline.  “I like this one best.”

The house stood back from the road in its clump of pines.  The coach stopped, and Rand and Jacqueline, descending, crossed a strip of short grass tufted with fennel and velvet mullein to the gate beneath the mimosa, entered the gay little yard, and moved up the path to the larger of the two porches.  They were at home.  On the porch to welcome them they found the white man who worked on shares and oversaw the farm, Joab and three other slaves of Rand’s, Mammy Chloe, Hannah, and the negro men who belonged to Jacqueline.  These gave a noisy greeting.  Rand put money into the hands of the slaves and sent them away happy to the tumble-down quarter behind the house.  The white man took his leave, and Mammy Chloe and Hannah retired to the kitchen, where supper was in preparation.  Rand and Jacqueline entered together the clean, bare rooms.

Later, when Hannah’s supper had been praised and barely touched, the two came again to the porch, and presently, hand in hand, moved down the steps, and over the dry summer grass to the mimosa at the gate.  Here they turned, and in the gathering dusk looked back at the house, the sleeping pines, and all the shadowy surrounding landscape.