Katrine | Page 5

might not have been so mirthful had she seen at that moment the man of whom she spoke.
Near the north gate McDermott had brought his horse suddenly to a walk. There was no longer gayety in his manner or his face. The merry light had left his eyes, and in its place shone a gleam, steady and cold, as only the eye of the intellectual Irish can be.
"And so that is the son! An unco man for the lassies, like his father before him." His eyelids drew together as he spoke. "Handsome, too--with a knowledge of life. It's a pity!" he said. "It's a pity! But he may not interfere. If he does, well--even if he does, the gods are with the Irish!"

II
THE MEETING IN THE WOODS
Instead of entering the drawing-room after Dermott's departure, Frank turned with some abruptness toward Mrs. Ravenel.
"I am going for a walk, mother," he said, with no suggestion that she accompany him; and her intimate acquaintance with Francis, sixth of the name, made her understand with some accuracy the moods of his son, Francis seventh.
"You are handsomer than ever, Frank!" she exclaimed, as if in answer to the suggestion.
"You spoil me, mother," he returned, with a smile.
"Women have always done that--" she began.
"And you more than any other," Frank broke in, kissing her, with a deference of manner singularly his own.
"There may be truth in that," Mrs. Ravenel admitted, a fine sense of humor marked by the grudging tone in which she spoke. "I remember that only yesterday I was in a rage because the roses were not further open to welcome you home."
"Nature is unappreciative," he returned; and the gray eyes with the level lids looked into the blue ones with the level lids, and both laughed.
For a space Mrs. Ravenel contemplated him, the ecstasy of motherhood illuminating the glance.
"You are quite the handsomest human being I ever saw, Frank--though I think I said something like that before."
"You are, of course, unprejudiced, lady mother," he laughed back from the lowest step.
"It's natural I should be--being only a mother," she explained, gayly.
"Ah," she went on, "I am so happy to have you at home with me! Not happy at having asked those people down. They come on the twenty-seventh."
"Whom have you asked?"
"The Prescotts."
"Good."
"The Porters and Sallie Maddox."
"Better."
"And Anne Lennox."
There was a silence.
"Did I hear you say 'best'?" Mrs. Ravenel inquired.
"By some wanderment of mind, I forgot it," Frank returned, lightly.
"I am always subtle in my methods," his mother continued. "Note the adroitness now. Why don't you marry her, Frank?"
"Do you think she would marry me?"
"Don't be foolish. Anne is devoted to you, and you must marry someone. You are an only son. There is the family name to be thought of, and there must be a Francis eighth to inherit the good looks of Francis seventh, must there not? And how I shall hate it!" she added, truthfully.
Again a silence fell between them before Frank turned the talk with intention in word and tone.
"About this new overseer?" he asked. "Satisfactory?"
"When not drunk--very."
"Does it"--he smiled--"I mean the drunkenness, not the satisfaction--occur frequently?"
"I am afraid it does."
"What did McDermott say his name is?"
"Patrick Dulany."
"French, I suppose?" he suggested.
"By all the laws of inference," his mother returned, with an answering gleam in her eye.
"There seems to have been a Celtic invasion of the Carolinas during my absence. Has he a family?"
"Only a daughter." And as Frank turned to leave her Mrs. Ravenel asked, lightly: "How long do you intend to stay here, Frank?"
"I have made no plans," he answered; but going down the carriageway he said to himself, with a smile: "Mother shows her hand too plainly. The girl is evidently young and pretty."
The plantation had never seemed so beautiful to him. The wild roses were in bloom; the fringe-trees and dogwood hung white along the riverbanks; the golden azaleas, nodding wake-robins, and muskadine flowers looked up at them from below, while the cotton spread its green tufts miles and miles away to a sunlit horizon.
Swinging along the road outside the park, the half-formed plan to visit the overseer left him, and purposeless he climbed the hill to Chestnut Ridge. Something in the occasion of his home-coming after a two years' absence--his mother's reference to his marriage, his remembrances of Anne Lennox--had brought back to his face its habitual expression of sadness. And more than he would have acknowledged was a disquietude caused by his instant resentment of the existence of Dermott McDermott. Never in his life had he felt more strongly the need for companionship. He had been loved by many women. He had never been believed in by any.
Passionate, proud, intolerant, full of prejudice, conscious by twenty-six years' experience of a most magnetic power with women, he came to the edge of the far wood as