Keep your
heart simple and tender as it is now. Good-by."
Returning to her room with the portfolio she met her cousin in the
upper hall. He fixed his eyes searchingly upon her and with the air
of one who knew very much began, "Cousin Lou, my eyes are not so
often blinded with tears as yours, yet they see more perhaps than
you are aware of. I'm willing to woo you as gallantly as can any
man, but you've got to keep some faith with me as the representative
of our house and of the cause which, as a Southern girl, should be
first always in its claims."
Her heart fluttered, for his words suggested both knowledge and a
menace. At the same time the scenes she had passed through,
especially the last, lifted her so far above his plane of life that
she shrank from him with something very like contempt.
"Do you know what I have been writing?" she asked sternly.
"I neither know nor care. I only wish you to understand that you
cannot trifle with me nor wrong me with impunity."
"Oh!" she cried, with a strong repellant gesture, "why can't YOU see
and understand? You fairly make me loathe the egotism which, in
scenes like these, can think only of self.
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