After that there had been
but one pair of eyes and arms for her in the wide world. All of that
spring and summer, as the colonel put it, she was like a bird pouring
out her soul in one continuous song. Then there had come a night in
Richmond,--the night of the ball,--followed by her sudden return home,
hollow-eyed and white, and the mysterious postponement of the wedding
for a year.
Everybody wondered, but no one knew, and only as the months went by
did her spirits gain a little, and she begin to sing once more.
It was at a great party on a neighboring estate, amid the swim of the
music and the whirl of soft lace. Suddenly loud voices and threats,
a shower of cards flung at a man's face, an uplifted arm caught by the
host. Then a hall door thrust open and a half-frenzied man with
disordered dress staggering out. Then the startled face of a young
girl all in white and a cry no one ever forgot:--
"Oh, Robert! Not again?"
Her long ride home in the dead of the night, Nancy alone in the coach,
her escort--a distant cousin--on horseback behind.
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