Chapter 14 - Page 2

professed herself resigned to old maidenhood.

But in spite of these rosy dreams, Graciella was not happy. To marry the colonel she must give up Ben; and Ben, discarded, loomed up larger than Ben, accepted. She liked Ben; she was accustomed to Ben. Ben was young, and youth attracted youth. Other things being equal, she would have preferred him to the colonel. But Ben was poor; he had nothing and his prospects for the future were not alluring. He would inherit little, and that little not until his uncle's death. He had no profession. He was not even a good farmer, and trifled away, with his useless models and mechanical toys, the time he might have spent in making his uncle's plantation productive. Graciella did not know that Fetters had a mortgage on the plantation, or Ben's prospects would have seemed even more hopeless.

She felt sorry not only for herself, but for Ben as well--sorry that he should lose her--for she knew that he loved her sincerely. But her first duty was to herself. Conscious that she possessed talents, social and otherwise, it was not her view of creative wisdom that it should implant in the mind tastes and in the heart longings destined never to be realised. She must discourage Ben--gently and gradually, for of course he would suffer; and humanity, as well as friendship, counselled kindness. A gradual breaking off, too, would be less harrowing to her own feelings.

"I suppose you admire Colonel French immensely," said Ben, with assumed impartiality.

"Oh, I like him reasonably well," she said with an equal lack of candour. "His conversation is improving. He has lived in the metropolis, and has seen so much of the world that he can scarcely speak without saying something interesting. It's a liberal education to converse with people who have had opportunities. It helps to prepare my mind for life at the North."

"You set a great deal of store by the North, Graciella. Anybody would allow, to listen to you, that you didn't love your own country."

"I love the South, Ben, as I loved Aunt Lou, my old black mammy. I've laid in her arms many a day, and I 'most cried my eyes out when she died. But that didn't mean that I never wanted to see any one else. Nor am I going to live in the South a minute longer than I can help, because it's too slow. And New York isn't all--I want to travel and see the world. The South is away behind."

She had said much the same thing weeks before; but then it had been spontaneous. Now she was purposely trying to make Ben see how unreasonable was his hope.

Ben stood, as he obscurely felt, upon delicate ground. Graciella had not been the only person to overhear remarks about the probability of the colonel's seeking a wife in Clarendon, and jealousy had sharpened Ben's perceptions while it increased his fears. He had little to offer Graciella. He was not well educated; he had