CONFUSION IN COVENANTS
XLI ELLEN OR GRACE
XLII FACE TO FACE
XLIII THE RECKONING
XLIV THIS INDENTURE WITNESSETH
XLV ELLEN

CHAPTER I

THE KISSING OF MISS GRACE SHERATON

I admit I kissed her.

Perhaps I should not have done so. Perhaps I would not do so again. Had
I known what was to come I could not have done so. Nevertheless I did.

After all, it was not strange. All things about us conspired to be
accessory and incendiary. The air of the Virginia morning was so soft
and warm, the honeysuckles along the wall were so languid sweet, the
bees and the hollyhocks up to the walk so fat and lazy, the smell of the
orchard was so rich, the south wind from the fields was so wanton!
Moreover, I was only twenty-six. As it chances, I was this sort of a
man: thick in the arm and neck, deep through, just short of six feet
tall, and wide as a door, my mother said; strong as one man out of a
thousand, my father said. And then--the girl was there.

So this was how it happened that I threw the reins of Satan, my black
horse, over the hooked iron of the gate at Dixiana Farm and strode up to
the side of the stone pillar where Grace Sheraton stood, shading her
eyes with her hand, watching me approach through the deep trough road
that flattened there, near the Sheraton lane. So I laughed and strode
up--and kept my promise. I had promised myself that I would kiss her the
first time that seemed feasible. I had even promised her--when she came
home from Philadelphia so lofty and superior for her stopping a brace of
years with Miss Carey at her Allendale Academy for Young Ladies--that if
she mitigated not something of her haughtiness, I would kiss her fair,
as if she were but a girl of the country. Of these latter I may guiltily
confess, though with no names, I had known many who rebelled little more
than formally.

She stood in the shade of the stone pillar, where the ivy made a deep
green, and held back her light blue skirt daintily, in her high-bred
way; for never was a girl Sheraton who was not high-bred or other than
fair to look upon in the Sheraton way--slender, rather tall, long
cheeked, with very much dark hair and a deep color under the skin, and
something of long curves withal. They were ladies, every one, these
Sheraton girls; and as Miss Grace presently advised me, no milkmaids
wandering and waiting in lanes for lovers.

When I sprang down from Satan Miss Grace was but a pace or so away. I