For a moment he did not answer, and she watched the frown gather slowly between his eyebrows.

“There, there, Blossom, don’t begin that already,” he responded irritably, “we can’t make it public as long as my mother lives—­that’s out of the question.  Do you think I could love you if I felt you had forced me to murder her?  Heaven knows I’ve done enough—­I’ve married you fair and square, and you ought to be satisfied.”

“I am satisfied,” she replied on the point of tears, “but, oh, Jonathan, I’m not happy.”

“Then it’s your own fault,” he answered, still annoyed with her.  “You’ve had everything your own way, and just because I get in trouble and come to you for sympathy, you begin to nag.  For God’s sake, don’t become a nagging woman, Blossom.  A man hates her worse than poison.”

“O Jonathan!” she cried out sharply, placing her hand on her breast as though he had stabbed her.

“Of course, I’m only warning you.  Your great charm is poise—­I never saw a woman who had so much of it.  That’s what a man wants in a wife, too.  Vagaries are all right in a girl, but when he marries, he wants something solid and sensible.”

“Then you do love me, Jonathan?”

“Don’t be a goose,” he rejoined—­for it was a question to which he had never in his life returned a direct answer.

“Of course, I know you do or you wouldn’t have married me—­but I wish you’d tell me so—­just in words—­sometimes.”

“If I told you so, you’d have no curiosity left, and that would be bad for you.  Come, kiss me, sweetheart, that’s better than talking.”

She kissed him obediently, as mildly complaisant as she had once been coldly aloof.  Though the allurement of the remote had deserted her, she still possessed, in his eyes, the attraction of the beautiful.  If the excitement of the chase was ended, the pleasure of the capture was still amply sufficient to make up the difference.  He laughed softly as he kissed her, enjoying her freshness, her surrender, her adoration, which she no longer attempted to hide.

When he parted from her several hours afterwards, he had almost recovered the casual gaiety which had become his habit of mind.  Life was too short either to wonder or to regret, he had once remarked, and a certain easy fatalism had softened so far the pricks of a disturbing conscience.

The walk from the pasture to the house led through a tangle of shrubbery called by the negroes, the Haunt’s Walk, and as he pushed the leafless boughs out of his way, a flitting glimpse of red caught his eye beyond a turn in the path.  An instant later, Molly passed him on her way to the spring or to the meadows beyond.

“Good day, Mr. Jonathan,” she said, while her lips curved and she looked up at him with her arch and brilliant smile.

“Good day to yourself, cousin,” he responded gaily, “what is your hurry?”

As he made a movement to detain her, she slipped past him, and a minute afterwards her laugh floated back.