"
She searched my face eagerly,--then--
"You _shall_ call me Miss Caroline--but remember, sir, it makes you my
servant." She smiled again, without the icy reserve this time, whereat I
was glad--but back of the smile I could see that she felt a bitter
homesickness of the new place.
"Your most obedient servant," I said. "You have another slave, Miss
Caroline, another that refuses manumission--another bit of personal
property, clumsy but willing."
"Thank you, Major, I need your kindness more than I might seem to need
it. Good night!" and even then she gave me a rose, with the same
coquetry, I doubt not, that had once made Colonel Jere Lansdale quick to
think of his pistols when another evoked it. Only now it masked her
weariness, her sense of desperate desolation. I took the rose and kissed
her hand. I left her wilting in the big chair, staring hard into the
fireplace that Clem had rilled with summer green things.
When my fellow-chattel appeared next morning with my coffee, he was
embarrassed. With guile he strove to be talkative about matters of no
consequence. But this availed him not.
"Clem," I said frigidly, "tell me just what you said to Mrs. Lansdale
about me.
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