-o'clock dinner; the waiter had
succumbed in clearing the lunch-table and made mesmeric passes with the
dish-rag in a fantasy of washing the plates; the stable-boy slumbered
in the hay, high in the loft, while the fat old coachman, with a
chamois-skin in his hand, dozed as he sat on the step of the surrey,
between the fenders; the old dog snored on the veranda floor, and Mrs.
Keene's special attendant, who was really more a seamstress than a
ladies' maid, dreamed that for some mysterious reason she could not
thread a needle to fashion in a vast hurry the second mourning of her
employer, who she imagined would call for it within a week!

Outside the charmed precincts of this Castle Indolence, the busy
cotton-pickers knew no pause nor stay. The steam-engine at the gin
panted throughout all the long hot hours, the baler squealed and rasped
and groaned, as it bound up the product into marketable compass, but
there was no one waking near enough to note how the guest of the mansion
was pacing the floor in a stress of nervous excitement, and to comment
on the fact.

Toward sunset, a sudden commotion roused the slumbrous place. There had
been an accident at the gin,--a boy had been caught in the machinery and
variously mangled. Dr. George Eigdon had been called and had promptly
sewed up the wounds. A runner had been sent to the mansion for bandages,
brandy, fresh clothing, and sundry other collateral necessities of the
surgery, and the news had thrown the house into unwonted excitement.

"The boy won't die, then?" Geraldine asked of a second messenger, as he
stood by the steps of the veranda, waiting for the desired commodities.

"Lawdy,--_no_, ma'am! He is as good as new! Doc' George, _he_ fix him
up."

Gordon, whom the tumult had summoned forth from his absorptions, noted
Geraldine's triumphant laugh as she received this report, the toss of
her spirited little head, the light in her dark blue eyes, deepening
to sapphire richness, her obvious pride in the skill, the humanitarian
achievement, of her lover. Dr. George must be due here this evening, he
fancied. For she was all freshly bedight; her gown was embellished with
delicate laces, and its faint green hue gave her the aspect of some
water-sprite, posed against that broad expanse of the Mississippi River,
that was itself of a jade tint reflected from a green and amber sky;
at the low horizon line the vermilion sun was sinking into its swirling
depths.

Gordon perceiv