“Howdy’ do,” he said, nodding to them both.  “Miss Harriet, is yore ma needin’ any more eggs now?  I diskivered another nest this mornin’, an’ ’lowed she mought be able to use ’em.  She’s about the only one in the place ’at ever has cash to pay fer produce.”

“I don’t know, Mr. Wambush,” Harriet replied, politely.  “She is in the house; you might go in and see her.”

The old man shifted his basket to his other arm and hesitated.  Westerfelt got into the buggy and took up the reins.

“I reckon, Miss Harriet, you hain’t heerd frum Toot sence I seed you?”

“No, Mr. Wambush.”  Westerfelt was not looking at her as she spoke, and the saddest part of it lay in the fact that he was trying to save her from what he imagined must be a very embarrassing situation.  “No, he has not written me.”

“Well”—­the old man turned—­“as fur as I’m concerned, I’m not one bit afeerd that he’ll not be able to take keer o’ hisse’f, but his mammy is pestered mighty nigh to death about ’im.”

Just then Mrs. Floyd came out on the porch and threw a kiss at Harriet.  The act and its accompanying smile reminded Westerfelt of the deception the old lady had played on Bates, and that added weight to the vague convictions once more alive in his brain.  Mrs. Floyd’s smile implied a certain confidence in his credulity and pliability that was galling to his proud spirit.

His horse was mettlesome, and Westerfelt drove rapidly over a good road which ran along the foot of the mountain.  The day was fine, the scenery glorious, but he was oblivious of their charm.  His agony had never been so great.  He kept his eyes on his horse; his face was set, his glance hard.  Once he turned upon her, maddened by the sweet, half-confiding ring in her voice when she asked him why he was so quiet, but the memory of his promise never to reproach her again stopped him.  With that came a sudden reckless determination to rid himself of the whole thing by going away, at least temporarily, and then he remembered that he really had some business affairs to attend to in Atlanta.

“I am going away awhile, Miss Harriet,” he told her.

“You are, really?”

“Yes; I’m needed down in Atlanta for a while.  I reckon I’ll get back in a few weeks.”

He saw her face change, but he did not read it correctly.  At that moment he could not have persuaded himself that she cared very much one way or the other.  Surely a girl who had, scarcely six weeks before, sobbed in old Wambush’s arms about her love for his son could not feel anything deeply pertaining to another man whom she had known such a short time.

“Let’s go back,” he proposed, suddenly, and almost brutally.  “I reckon we’ve gone far enough.  Night comes on mighty quick here in the valley.”

She raised her eyes to his in a half-frightened glance, and said: 

“Yes; let’s go back.”

He turned his horse, and for fifteen minutes they drove along in silence.  There was now absolutely no pity in his heart.  The vast black problem of his own tortured love seemed to be soaking into him from the very air about him.