“Forgive me,” said Jon, “but aren’t you forgetting that your sister’s a lady, and that one doesn’t behave like a cad with a lady?”

Francis Wilmot did not answer; he went to a window and stood looking out. Jon felt very angry. He sat down on the arm of a long chair, suddenly extremely tired. He sat there looking at the ground, and frowning heavily. Damn the fellow! Had he been bullying Anne? If he had—! A voice behind him said: “I reckon I didn’t mean it. I certainly am sorry. It was just the scare. Shake hands!”

Jon stretched out his own impulsively, and they shook hands, looking straight into each other’s eyes.

“You must be about through,” said Francis Wilmot. “Come on to my room; I’ve gotten a flask. I’ve given Anne a dram already.”

They went up. Jon sat in the only chair, Francis Wilmot on the bed.

“Anne tells me she’s asked you to come home with us tomorrow. I surely hope you will.”

“I should simply love to.”

“That’s fine!”

They drank, talked a little, smoked.

“Good night,” said Jon, suddenly, “or I shall go to sleep here.”

They shook hands again, and Jon staggered to his room. He fell asleep at once.

They travelled next day, all three, through Columbia and Charleston, to the Wilmot’s place. It stood in the bend of a red river, with cotton fields around, and swampy ground where live oaks grew, melancholy, festooned with Florida moss. The old slave quarters, disused except as kennels, were still standing; the two-storied house had flights of wooden steps running up on each side, on to the wide wisteria-covered porch, and needed a coat of paint; and, within, rooms ran one into the other, hung with old portraits of dead Wilmots and de Frevilles; and darkies wandered around and talked their soft drawled speech.

Jon was happier than he had been since he landed in the New World three and a half years ago. In the mornings he sauntered with the dogs in the sunlight or tried to write poetry—for the two young Wilmots were busy. After the midday meal he rode with them or with Anne alone. In the evening he learned from her to play the ukulele before a wood fire lighted at sundown, or heard about cotton culture from Francis, with whom, since that moment of animosity, he was on the best of terms.