truest, the best--he loves the lady at Westover--they are to be
married--he never knew what people were saying--he was not himself when he
spoke to me so last night"--Her eyes appealed to the face above her. "I
could never have dreamed all this," she said. "Tell me that I was awake!"

The minister's wife looked down upon her with a bitter smile. "So you've
had your fool's paradise? Well, once I had mine, though 'twas not your
kind. 'Tis a pretty country, Audrey, but it's not long before they turn
you out." She laughed somewhat drearily, then in a moment turned shrew
again. "He never knew what people were saying?" she cried. "You little
fool, do you suppose he cared? 'Twas you that played your cards all wrong
with your Governor's ball last night!--setting up for a lady,
forsooth!--bringing all the town about your ears! You might have known
that he would never have taken you there in his senses. At Fair View
things went very well. He was entertained,--and I meant to see that no
harm came of it,--and Darden got his support in the vestry. For he was
bit,--there's no doubt of that,--though what he ever saw in you more than
big eyes and a brown skin, the Lord knows, not I! Only your friend!--a
fine gentleman just from London, with a whole Canterbury book of stories
about his life there, to spend a'most a summer on the road between his
plantation and a wretched glebe house because he was only your friend, and
had saved you from the Indians when you were a child, and wished to be
kind to you still! I'll tell you who did wish to be kind to you, and that
was Jean Hugon, the trader, who wanted to marry you."

Audrey rose to her feet, and moved slowly backward to the wall. Mistress
Deborah went shrilly on: "I dare swear you believe that Mr. Haward had you
in mind all the years he was gone from Virginia? Well, he didn't. He puts
you with Darden and me, and he says, 'There's the strip of Oronoko down by
the swamp,--I 've told my agent that you're to have from it so many pounds