The Law of the Land | Page 3

marriage! Our only hope is
in some miracle. It is time for me to take you in hand. Listen, Lady. Let
me ask you to sit a trifle farther back upon that chair. So, that is better.
Now, draw the skirt a little closer. That is well. Now, sit easily, keep
your back from the chair; try to keep your feet concealed. Remember,
Lady, you are a woman now, and there are certain rules, certain little
things, which will help you so much, so much."
Mrs. Ellison sighed, then yawned, touching her white teeth with the tip
of her fan. "Dear me, it certainly is going to be warm," she said at last.
"Lady, dear, please run and get my book, won't you? You know your
darling mamma is getting so--well, I won't say fat, God forbid! but
so--really--well, thank you."
Miss Lady fled gladly and swiftly enough. For an instant she halted,
uncertain, on the wide gallery, her face troubled, her attitude undecided.
Then, in swift mutiny, she sprang down the steps and was off in open
desertion. She fled down the garden walk, and presently was welcomed
riotously by a score of dogs and puppies, long since her friends.
Left alone, the elder lady sat for a moment in thought. Her face now
seemed harder in outline, more enigmatical. She gazed after the girl
who left her, and into her eyes came a look which one must have called
strangely unmaternal--a look not tender, but hard, calculating, cold.
"She is pretty," she murmured to herself half-aloud. "She is going to be
very pretty--the prettiest of the family in generations, perhaps.
Well-handled, that girl could marry anybody. I'll have to be careful she
doesn't marry the wrong one. They're headstrong, these Ellisons. Still, I
think I can handle this one of them. In fact, I must." She smiled gently
and settled down into a half-reverie, purring to herself. "Dear me!" she
resumed at length, starting up, "how warm it grows! Where has that girl
gone? I do believe she has run away. Delphine! Ah-h-h-h, Delphine!"
There came no audible sound of steps, but presently there stood, just
within the parted draperies, the figure of the servant thus called upon.
Yet that title sat ill upon this tall young woman who now stood

awaiting the orders of her mistress. Garbed as a servant she was, yet
held herself rather as a queen. Her hair, black and luxuriant, was
straight and strong, and, brushed back smoothly from her temples as it
was, contrasted sharply with a skin just creamy enough to establish it as
otherwise than pure white. Egyptian, or Greek, or of unknown race, this
servant, Delphine, might have been; but had it not been for her station
and surroundings, one could never have suspected in her the trace of
negro blood. She stood now, a mellow-tinted statue of not quite yellow
ivory, silent, turning upon her mistress eyes large, dark and inscrutable
as those of a sphinx. One looking upon the two, as they thus confronted
each other, must have called them a strange couple. Why they should
be mistress and servant was not a matter to be determined upon a first
light guess. Indeed, they seemed scarcely such. From dark eye to dark
eye there seemed to pass a signal of covert understanding, a signal of
doubt, or suspicion, or armed neutrality, yet of mutual comprehension.
"Delphine," said Mrs. Ellison, presently, "bring me a glass of wine.
And from now on, Delphine, see to it that you watch that girl. Tell me
what she does. There's very little restraint of any kind here on the
plantation, and she is just the age--well, you must keep me informed.
You may bring the decanter, Delphine. I really don't feel fit for
breakfast."

CHAPTER II
MULEY
In the warm sun of the southern morning the great plantation lay as
though half-asleep, dozing and blinking at the advancing day. The
plantation house, known in all the country-side as the Big House, rested
calm and self-confident in the middle of a wide sweep of cleared lands,
surrounded immediately by dark evergreens and the occasional
primeval oaks spared in the original felling of the forest. Wide and
rambling galleries of one height or another crawled here and there
about the expanses of the building, and again paused, as though weary
of the attempt to circumvent it. The strong white pillars, rising from the

ground floor straight to the third story, shone white and stately, after
that old southern fashion, that Grecian style, simplified and made
suitable to provincial purses by those Adams brothers of old England
who first set the fashion in early American architecture. White-coated,
with wide, cool, green blinds, with ample and wide-doored halls and
deep, low windows, the Big House, here in