“Do you think Belle Plain is ever going to look as it did, Charley?—­as we remember it when we were children?” asked Betty, giving a new direction to the conversation.

“Why, of course it is, dear, you are doing wonders!”

“I’ve really been ashamed of the place, the way it looked—­and I can’t understand Tom!”

“Don’t try to,” advised Norton.  “Look here, Betty, do you remember it was right on this terrace I met you for the first time?  My mother brought me down, and I arrived with a strong prejudice against you, young lady, because of the clothes I’d been put into—­they were fine but oppressive.”

“How long did the prejudice last, Charley?”

“It didn’t last at a11, I thought you altogether the nicest little girl I’d ever seen—­just what I think now, I wish you could care for me, Betty, just a little; just enough to marry me.”

“But, Charley, I do care for you!  I’m very, very fond of you.”

“Well, don’t make such a merit of it,” he said, and they both laughed.  “I’m at an awful disadvantage, Betty, from having proposed so often.  That gives it a humorous touch which doesn’t properly reflect the state of my feeling at all—­and you hear me without the least emotion; so long as I keep my distance we might just as well be discussing the weather!”

“You are very good about that—­”

“Keeping my distance, you mean?—­Betty, if you knew how much resolution that calls for!  I wonder if that isn’t my mistake—­” And Norton came a step nearer and took her in his arms.

With her hands on his shoulders Betty pushed him back, while the rich color came into her cheeks.  She was remembering Bruce Carrington, who had not kept his distance.

“Please, Charley,” she said half angrily, “I do like you tremendously, but I simply can’t bear you when you act like this —­let me got”

“Betty, I despair of you ever caring for me!” and as Norton turned abruptly away he saw Tom Ware appear from about a corner of the house.  “Oh, hang it, there’s Tom!”

“You are very nice, anyway, Charley—­” said Betty hurriedly, fortified by the planter’s approach.

Ware stalked toward them.  Having dined with Betty as recently as the day before, he contented himself with a nod in her direction.  His greeting to Norton was a more ambitious undertaking; he said he was pleased to see him; but in so far as facial expression might have indorsed the statement this pleasure was well disguised, it did not get into his features.  Pausing on the terrace beside them, he indulged in certain observations on the state of the crops and the weather.

“You’ve lost a couple of niggers, I hear?” he added with an oblique glance.

“Yes,” said Norton.

“Got on the track of them yet?” Norton shook his head.  “I understand you’ve a new overseer?” continued Ware, with another oblique glance.

“Then you understand wrong—­Carrington’s my guest,” said Norton.  “He’s talking of putting in a crop for himself next season, so he’s willing to help me make mine.”