Page:Randall Parrish--My Lady of the South.djvu/185

ON GUARD WITH JEAN up to hate my enemies; to ﬁght them bitterly, and to the death. That was the feud spirit, and we took this feeling with us into the war. The people of the mountains enlisted for North or South the better to ﬁght out their old grudges. and I cannot wipe out in a day the bitterness implanted in me from babyhood."

"Yet you were educated in a Northern seminary. Surely you found friends there?"

"A few, but even there we of the South clung together. We are a clannish lot, Lieutenant King, narrow in our prejudices, and unforgiving. I sincerely wish I could take a broader view."

"And you do already. You are here now with a Yankee whom you trust. Peculiar conditions have brought us into sudden intimacy. Under other circumstances I could never have known you as I do now; years of ordinary intercourse would not have made us so well acquainted. We are really friends, are we not?"

Perhaps my voice and manner were too ardent. for her hand slipped from mine, and I heard the sharp indrawing of her breath.

"I— am hardly ready to promise that. You are not justified in asking so much. I feel kindly toward you; I believe you a gentleman, and trust you as one. But I do not know you, Lieutenant King, and—and," her voice grew ﬁrmer, "all my friends are on the other side."

"Oh no, they are not, Miss Denslow; I am your friend in spite of every difference between us. So long as I live there will be one heart under a blue uniform you may [ 175 ]