Carolina Lee Part 22

Then he drew back strangely and looked around at the garden and frowned, as if it had been to blame for the words he had spoken when he had not meant to speak. But, although Carolina saw the look and the frown, she only smiled and breathed a great sigh of content and looked at the garden happily.

Then he turned to her again and said:

"Did you know that you and I are related?" And he saw with a great lift of the heart that she turned pale before answering, so to spare her he went on, hurriedly:

"I have been talking to Mrs. Winchester, and we find that the La Granges and Lees are kin. You and I are about twelfth cousins, according to Miss Sallie Yancey."

"So we are of the same blood," said Carolina, gently. Then she added: "I am glad."

"And so am I,--more glad than I can say, for it will give me the opportunity to be of service to you--in a way I could not--perhaps--if we were not kin."

Carolina looked at him inquiringly, but he had turned his head away, and again a frown wrinkled his smooth, brown forehead. Carolina looked at him eagerly. He was a man to fill any woman's eye,--tall, lean, lithe, and commanding, with long brown fingers which were closed nervously upon the brim of his soft black hat. His nose was straight, his lips sensitive yet strong, and his eyes had a way of making most women sigh without ever knowing why. Moultrie La Grange was said to have "a way with him" which men never understood, but which women knew, and knew to their sorrow, for everywhere it was whispered that "Moultrie would never marry, since--" and here the whispers became nods and half-uttered words and mysterious signs which South Carolinians understood, but which mystified Mrs. Winchester, and Carolina did not happen to hear the subject discussed.

"You have come down here," said Moultrie, "to restore Guildford."

"Yes," said Carolina, seeing that he paused for a reply.

"I wish that I could restore Sunnymede. Our place joins yours."

"It does?" cried Carolina. "Then why don't you?"

He looked at her sharply. Was she making fun of him?

"You are a rich young lady. I am a poor man. Can I rebuild Sunnymede with these?" He held out two fine, strong, symmetrical hands.

Carolina looked at them appreciatively before she answered.

"I am a poor young woman, but I intend to rebuild Guildford with, these!" And she held out beside his two of the prettiest hands and wrists and arms that Moultrie La Grange had ever seen in his life, and he at once said so. And Carolina, instead of being bored, as was her wont in other days, was so frankly pleased that she blushed, and said to herself that the reason she believed this man meant what he said was because she was poor, and he could not possibly be paying court to a wealth that she had lost. But the truth of the matter was that she believed him because she wanted to. It gave her an exquisite and unknown pleasure to have this man tell her over and over, as he did, that her hands were the most beautiful he had ever seen, and Carolina looked at them in a childish wonder, and as if she had never seen them before. And it was not until she had laid them in her lap again, and they were partly hidden, that she could bring the conversation back to anything like reason.

"How do you mean?" he questioned. "You can't do a thing without money.

And I hear--" he stopped in confusion, and his forehead reddened.

"You know that we have lost ours," supplemented Carolina. "Well, you have heard correctly. Every dollar of my fortune is gone!" Her voice took on so triumphant a ring that Moultrie looked up at her in surprise.

He did not know that part of her exultation came from the joy it gave her to be able to proclaim her poverty to this man out of all the world, and thus put herself on a level with him.

"I have only," she continued, "a little laid by which came from the sale of my jewels." Then, as she still saw the questions in his eyes which he forebore to ask, she added: "Do you want me to tell you about it all?"

"More than anything in the world," he a.s.sured her. And something in his tone shook the girl so that she paused a little before she began.

"Well, I suppose you know that when Sherman, my brother, mortgaged Guildford, Colonel Yancey bought the mortgage and foreclosed it. That is how he got possession of Guildford."

"But why?" interrupted the man. "What in the world did he especially want Guildford for, when there are a dozen other estates he could have bought for less money, and some of them with houses already built?"

"I don't know," said Carolina, so hurriedly that the man turned his eyes upon her, and, noticing the wave of colour mount to her brow under his gaze, he looked away and all at once he knew why. Carolina did not see his hands clench and his teeth come together with a snap, as he thought of the Colonel Yancey that men knew.

"But Mr. Howard, the father of my dearest friend, persuaded Colonel Yancey to sell it to him for the face value of the mortgage, so that now I have no fear of losing it, for Mr. Howard will give me all the time I want to pay for it."

"But what are you going to pay for it with?" asked the young man.

"Well, if you will go with us when we look over the estate, I can tell you better than I can now. Do you happen to know anything about this new process of making turpentine?"

"Of course I do," said La Grange, with a frown. "I suppose that your brother and his friends have organized a company with Northern capital to erect a plant which will make everybody rich. That's what all Northerners tell us when they want us to invest. Money is all Yankees seem to think about."

"My brother will have nothing to do with the affair at all!" said Carolina, with some heat. "Guildford is mine, and I'm going to make it pay for itself."

Moultrie said nothing, but his chin quivered with a desire to laugh, and Carolina saw it. Then he turned to her.

"You have never seen the home of your ancestors? How are you going to have your first view of it? From the Barnwells' carryall?"

Carolina's eyes dilated and she bit her lip.

"How else could I go?" she said, gently.

"If you would allow me," he said, eagerly, "we would go on horseback,--just you and I,--early, early in the morning. It would be the best time. Will you?"

"Oh, will you take me?" cried Carolina. There was only a look from Moultrie La Grange's eyes for an answer. But Carolina's flashed and wavered and dropped before it.

"Did you ever hear of a magnificent horse your grandfather owned, named Splendour?" he asked, quietly.

"Ah, yes, indeed."

"Well, I own a direct descendant of the sire of that very animal. Her name is Scintilla, and my friend, Barney Mazyck, owns Scintilla's full sister, a mare named Araby. I'll borrow her for you. Would you like that?"

"Oh, Mr. La Grange!" breathed Carolina.

"Please _never_ call me that. Do let me claim kin with you sufficiently to have you call me 'Moultrie.'"

"And will you call me 'Carolina?'" she asked, shyly.

"We never do that down here with young ladies, unless we are own cousins. But I will call you 'Miss Carolina,' if I may."

"Then you are asking me to take more of a privilege than you will," said Carolina.

"I want you to take every privilege with me that you can permit yourself," he said, earnestly.

When Carolina went indoors that night, the first thing she did was to take two candlesticks, and, holding them at arm's length above her head, to study her own face in the great pier-gla.s.s which, in its carved mahogany frame, occupied one corner of her large bedchamber. Whatever the picture was which she saw reflected there, it seemed to give her pleasure, for she coloured and smiled as her eyes met those of the girl in the mirror.

"I am glad _he_ thinks so!" she whispered to herself, as she turned away.

CHAPTER XIII.

GUILDFORD

Carolina never forgot that morning. She was up at four o'clock, and, by a previous arrangement with old Aunt Calla, the cook, she had a cup of coffee at dawn. Aunt Calla brought it into the dining-room herself.