“He’ll scarce turn up here, in these wilds,” Mr. Riddle repeated, “and what I am wondering, Sarah, is how the devil we are to live here.”

“How do these good people live, who helped us when we were starving?”

Mr. Riddle flung his hand eloquently around the cabin.  There was something of disgust in the gesture.

“You see!” he said, “love in a cottage.”

“But it is love,” said the lady, in a low tone.

He broke into laughter.

“Sally,” he cried, “I have visions of you gracing the board at which we sat to-day, patting journey-cakes on the hearth, stewing squirrel broth with the same pride that you once planned a rout.  Cleaning the pots and pans, and standing anxious at the doorway staring through a sunbonnet for your lord and master.”

“My lord and master!” said the lady, and there was so much of scorn in the words that Mr. Riddle winced.

“Come,” he said, “I grant now that you could make pans shine like pier-glasses, that you could cook bacon to a turn—­although I would have laid an hundred guineas against it some years ago.  What then?  Are you to be contented with four log walls?  With the intellectual companionship of the McChesneys and their friends?  Are you to depend for excitement upon the chances of having the hair neatly cut from your head by red fiends?  Come, we’ll go back to the Rue St. Dominique, to the suppers and the card parties of the countess.  We’ll be rid of regrets for a life upon which we have turned our backs forever.”

She shook her head, sadly.

“It’s no use, Harry,” said she, “we’ll never be rid of regrets.”

“We’ll never have a barony like Temple Bow, and races every week, and gentry round about.  But, damn it, the Rebels have spoiled all that since the war.”

“Those are not the regrets I mean,” answered Mrs. Temple.

“What then, in Heaven’s name?” he cried.  “You were not wont to be thus.  But now I vow you go beyond me.  What then?”

She did not answer, but sat leaning forward over the hearth, he staring at her in angry perplexity.  A sound broke the afternoon stillness,—­the pattering of small, bare feet on the puncheons.  A tremor shook the woman’s shoulders, and little Tom stood before her, a quaint figure in a butternut smock, his blue eyes questioning.  He laid a hand on her arm.

Then a strange thing happened.  With a sudden impulse she turned and flung her arms about the boy and strained him to her, and kissed his brown hair.  He struggled, but when she released him he sat very still on her knee, looking into her face.  For he was a solemn child.  The lady smiled at him, and there were two splashes like raindrops on her fair cheeks.

As for Mr. Riddle, he went to the door, looked out, and took a last pinch of snuff.

“Here is the mistress of the house coming back,” he cried, “and singing like the shepherdess in the opera.”