ey had faced each other at last with resolute eyes and unswerving
wills. On his side was the pride of an innocent man accused, the
bitterness of a proud man on an inferior plane; on hers, the
recollection of that wild evening in the road, and the belated
recognition of the debt she owed her race.

In the winter she went up to Richmond and he slowly forced himself to
renounce her. He began to see his old dream as it was--an emotional
chimera; a mental madness. As the year grew on he watched his long hope
wither root and branch, until, with the resurrection of the spring, it
lay still because there was no life left that might put forth. And when
his hope was dead he told himself that his unhappiness died with it,
that he might throw himself single-hearted into the work of his life.

VIII

The year passed and was done with--leaves budded, expanded, fell again.
Eugenia watched their growth, fulfilment, and decay as she had watched
them other seasons, though with eyes a thought widened by experience, a
shade darkened by tears. At first she had suffered wildly, then
passively, at last resignedly. The colour rebloomed in her cheek, the
gaiety rang back to her voice, for she was young, and youth is ever
buoyant.

There was work for her to do on the place, and she did it cheerfully.
She studied farming with her father and overhauled the methods of the
overseer, to the man's annoyance and the general's delight. "She tells
me Varly isn't scientific," roared the general with rapturous enjoyment.
"A scientific overseer! She'll be asking for an honest politician next."

"I'm sure Varly is a very respectable man," protested Miss Chris in her
usual position of defence. "The servants were always devoted to him
before the war--that says a good deal."

"There's not a better man in the county," admitted the general, "or a
worse farmer. Here I've let him go down hill at his own gait for more
than thirty years, to be pulled up in the end by a chit of a girl. I
wouldn't, if I were you, Eugie. He's old and he's slow."

"Oh! I'll promise not to hurt him," returned Eugenia. "I save him a lot
of hard work, and he likes it."

She drew on her loose dogskin gloves and went out to overlook the
shucking of the corn.

With the exercise in the open air she had gained in suppleness and
brilliancy. It was the outdoor work that saved her spirit and her
beauty--that gave her endurance for the indoor monotony and magnified
the splendid opt