“No,” said Carrington.  “Good-by, Jeff,” he added, turning away.

But when he left Thicket Point he did not take the Memphis road, but the road to Belle Plain.  Walking rapidly, he reached the entrance to the lane within the hour.  Here he paused irresolutely, it was as if the force of his purpose had already spent itself.  Then he tossed his pack into a fence corner and kept on toward the house.

CHAPTER XXII

AT THE CHURCH DOOR

There was the patter of small feet beyond Betty’s door, and little Steve, who looked more like a nice fat black Cupid than anything else, rapped softly; at the same time he effected to squint through the keyhole.

“Supper served, Missy,” he announced, then he turned no less than seven handsprings in the upper hall and slid down the balustrade to the floor below.  He was far from being a model house servant.

His descent was witnessed by the butler.  Now in his own youth big Steve with as fair a field had cut similar capers, yet he was impelled by his sense of duty to do for his grandson what his own father had so often done for him, and in no perfunctory manner.  It was only the sound of Betty’s door opening and closing that stayed his hand as he was making choice of a soft and vulnerable spot to which he should apply it.  Little Steve slid under the outstretched arm that menaced him and fled to the dining-room.

Betty came slowly down the stairs.  Four hours since Jeff had ridden away with the letter.  Already there had come to her moments when, she would have given much could she have recalled it, when she knew with dread certainty that whatever her feeling for Charley, it was not love; moments when she realized that she had been cruelly driven by circumstances into a situation that offered no escape.

“Mas’r Tom he say he won’t come in to supper, Missy; he ’low he’s powerful busy, gittin’ ready to go to Memphis in the mo’ning,” explained Steve, as he followed Betty into the dining-room.

His mistress nodded indifferently as she seated herself at the table; she was glad to be alone just then; she was in no mood to carry on the usual sluggish conversation with Tom; her own thoughts absorbed hermore and more they became terrifying things to her.

She ate her supper with big Steve standing behind her chair and little Steve balancing himself first on one foot and then on the other near the door.  Little Steve’s head was on a level with the chair rail and but for the rolling whites of his eyes he was no more than a black shadow against the walnut wainscoting; he formed the connecting link between the dining-room and the remote kitchen.  Betty suspected that most of the platters journeyed down the long corridor deftly perched on top of his woolly head.  She frequently detected him with greasy or sticky fingers, which while it argued a serious breach of trust also served to indicate his favorite dishes.  These two servitors were aware that their mistress was laboring under some unusual stress of emotion.  In its presence big Steven, who, with the slightest encouragement, became a medium through which the odds and ends of plantation gossip reached Betty’s ears, held himself to silence; while little Steve ceased to shift his weight from foot to foot, the very dearth of speech fixed his attention.