th amused and perplexed him. He couldn't reconcile
her quick compassion with her resentful and mocking attitude toward
himself.

At his impulsive offer of help the quiver shook her lips again, and
stooping over she did something which appeared to him quite unnecessary
to one gray suede shoe. "No, it isn't as bad as that. I don't need to be
carried," she said. "That sort of thing went out of fashion ages ago. If
you'll just let me lean on you until I get up the hill."

She put her hand through his arm; and while he walked slowly up the
hill, he decided that, taken all in all, the present moment was the most
embarrassing one through which he had ever lived. The fugitive gleam,
the romantic glamour, had vanished now. He wondered what it was about
her that he had at first found attractive. It was the spirit of the
place, he decided, nothing more. With every step of the way there closed
over him again his natural reserve, his unconquerable diffidence, his
instinctive recoil from the eccentric in behaviour. Conventions were the
breath of his young nostrils, and yet he was passing through an
atmosphere, without, thank Heaven, his connivance or inclination, where
it seemed to him the hardiest convention could not possibly survive.
When the lights of the mansion shone nearer through the bared boughs, he
heaved a sigh of relief.

"Have I tired you?" asked the girl in response, and the curious lilting
note in her voice made him turn his head and glance at her in sudden
suspicion. Had she really hurt herself, or was she merely indulging some
hereditary streak of buffoonery at his expense? It struck him that she
would be capable of such a performance, or of anything else that invited
her amazing vivacity. His one hope was that he might leave her in some
obscure corner of the house, and slip away before anybody capable of
making a club joke had discovered his presence. The hidden country was
lost now, and with it the perilous thrill of enchantment.

He rang the bell, and the door was opened by an old coloured butler who
had been one of the family servants of the Culpepers. How on earth,
Stephen wondered, could the Governor tolerate the venerable Abijah, the
chosen companion of Culpeper children for two generations? While he
wondered he recalled something his mother had said a few weeks ago about
Abijah's having been lured away by the offer of absurd wages. "You
needn't worry," she had added shrewdly, "he will return as soon as he