TO his dying day Gaston will never forget that ride to her home with Sallie Worth by his side. It was a perfect May day. The leaves on the trees were just grown and flashed in their green satin under the Southern sun, and every flower seemed in full bloom.

A great joy filled his heart with a sense of divine restfulness. He was unusually silent. And then she said something that made him open his eyes in new wonder.

“Don’t drive so fast Ben, and go around the longest way, I’m enjoying this.” She paused and a mischievous look came into her eyes as she saw his expression. “I’ve got the lion here by my side. I want to show all the girls in town that I’m the only one here to-day. It isn’t often I’ve a great man tied down fast like this.”

“Why did you spoil the first part of that pretty speech with the last?” he said with a frown.

“It was only your vanity that made me pause.”

“Could you read me like that?”

“Of course, all men are vain, much vainer than women.” Again there was a long silence.

They had reached the outskirts of the city now and were driving slowly through the deep shadows of a great forest.

“What beautiful trees!” he exclaimed.

“They are fine. Do you love big trees?”

“Yes, they always seem to me to have a soul. It used to make me almost cry to watch them fall beneath Nelse’s axe. I’d never have the heart to clear a piece of woods if I owned it.”

“I’m so glad to hear you say that. Papa laughed at me when I said something of the sort when he wanted to cut these woods. He left them just to please me. They belong to our place. They hide the house till you get right up to the gate, but I love them.”

Again he looked into her eyes and was silent.

“Now, I come to think of it, you’re the only girl I’ve met to-day who hasn’t mentioned my speech. That’s strange.”

“How do you know that I’m not saving up something very pretty to say to you later about it?”

“Tell me now.”

“No, you’ve spoiled it by your vanity in asking.” She said this looking away carelessly.

“Then I ’ll interpret your silence as the highest compliment you can pay me. When words fail we are deeply moved.”

“Vanity of vanity, all is vanity saith the preacher!” she exclaimed lifting her pretty hands.

They turned through a high arched iron gateway, across which was written in gold letters, “Oakwood.”

On a gently rising hill on the banks of the Catawba river rose a splendid old Southern mansion, its big Greek columns gleaming through the green trees like polished ivory. A wide porch ran across the full width of the house behind the big pillars, and smaller columns supported the full sweep of a great balcony above. The house was built of brick with Portland cement finish, and the whole painted in two shades of old ivory, with moss-green roof and dark rich Pompeian red brick foundations. With its green background of magnolia trees it seemed like a huge block of solid ivory flashing in splendour from its throne on the hill. The drive wound down a little dale, around a great circle filled with shrubbery and flowers and up to the pillared porte-cochere.

“Oh! what a beautiful home!” Gaston exclaimed with feeling.

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” she said with delight. “I love every brick in its walls, every tree and flower and blade of grass.”

“I’ve always dreamed of a home like that. Those big columns seem to link one to the past and add dignity and meaning to life.”

“Then you can understand how I love it, when I was born here and every nook and corner has its love message for me from the past that I have lived, as well as its wider meaning which you see.”

“The old South built beautiful homes, didn’t they? And that was one of the finest things about the proud old days,” he said.

“Yes, and the new South of which you spoke to-day will not forget this heritage of the old, when it comes to itself and shakes off its long suffering and poverty!”

Strange to hear that sort of a speech from a girl who loves society, dances divinely and dresses to kill. He thought of the words of his foster mother with a pang. He hoped she was joking about those things. But he had a strong suspicion from the consciousness of power with which she had tried once or twice to tease him that they were going to prove fatally true.

“Mother tells me you were in Baltimore, in that swell girls’ school on North Charles Street when I was a student at the University?”

“Yes, and we gave reception after reception to the Hopkins men and you never once honoured us with your presence.”

“But I didn’t know you were there, Miss Sallie.”

“Of course not. If you had, I wouldn’t speak to you now. They said you were a recluse. That you never went into society and didn’t speak to a woman for four years.”

“How did you hear that?”

“Bob St. Clare told me after I came home by way of apology for your bad manners in so shamefully neglecting a young woman from your own state.”

“I ’ll make amends, now.”

“Oh! I’m not suffering from loneliness as I did then. You know Bob put us up to inviting you to deliver the address. He said you were the only orator in North Carolina.”

“Bob’s the best friend I ever had. We entered college together at fifteen, and became inseparable friends.”

He helped her from the carriage and she ran lightly up the high stoop.

“Now come here and look at the view of the river before Papa comes and begins to talk about the tremendous water power in the falls.”

He followed her to the end of the long porch overlooking the river. Behind the house the hill abruptly plunged downward to the waters’ edge in a mountainous cliff. The river wound around this cliff past the house, emerging into a valley where it described a graceful curve almost doubling on itself and rolled softly away amid green overhanging willows and towering sycamores till lost in the distance toward the blue spurs of King’s Mountain.

“A glorious view!” said Gaston, looking long and lovingly at the silver surface of the river.

“Do you love the water, Mr. Gaston?”

“Passionately. I was born among the hills, but the first time I saw the ocean sweeping over five miles of sand reefs and breaking in white ............