Redlands, and with the transfer of the English investments Champney
retired, as he had suggested, to a smaller venture of his own, on a
plantation a few miles distant which the company had been unable to
secure.

During this interval Courtland had frequent interviews with Miss Sally,
and easy and unrestrained access to her presence. He had never again
erred on the side of romance or emotion; he had never again referred to
the infelix letter and photograph; and, without being obliged to confine
himself strictly to business affairs, he had maintained an even, quiet,
neighborly intercourse with her. Much of this was the result of his own
self-control and soldierly training, and gave little indication of the
deeper feeling that he was conscious lay beneath it. At times he caught
the young girl's eyes fixed upon him with a mischievous curiosity. A
strange thrill went through him; there are few situations so subtle and
dangerous as the accidental confidences and understandings of two young
people of opposite sex, even though the question of any sentimental
inclination be still in abeyance. Courtland knew that Miss Sally
remembered the too serious attitude he had taken towards her past. She
might laugh at it, and even resent it, but she KNEW it, remembered
it, knew that HE did, and this precious knowledge was confined to
themselves. It was in their minds when there was a pause in their more
practical and conventional conversation, and was even revealed in the
excessive care which Miss Sally later took to avert at the right moment
her mischievously smiling eyes. Once she went farther. Courtland had
just finished explaining to her a plan for substituting small farm
buildings for the usual half-cultivated garden-patches dear to the negro
field-hand, and had laid down the drawings on the table in the office,
when the young lady, leaning against it with her hands behind her, fixed
her bright gray eyes on his serious face.