Page:Randall Parrish--My Lady of the South.djvu/90

MY LADY OF THE SOUTH existing between us. And she actually neither hated nor despised me for what I had done. She would have said otherwise plainly enough had she so felt; there could he no doubt as to that—she had confessed only as she had been compelled. Over and over again I reviewed the words which had passed between us, reading into them much that never was there, and dwelling in memory upon the accent of her voice, the guarded secret of her eyes. If I had never seen her in the full flush of daylight as it flooded the shed, revealing the charming girl face, framed by the loosely gathered hair, and illumined by those wonderful eyes of blue-gray, no such recollection would have lingered both to perplex and interest me. She would have simply passed out of my thought, as many another had already done, or else remained merely a vague and indistinct remembrance. But now she was a tantalizing reality, her girlish face and form continually haunting me, her inscrutable eyes ever calling me back, the soft. Southern accent of her voice music to my memory.

There was nothing whatever at Coulter's to obstruct my progress, a mere shack of a house standing on the river's bank, a blacksmith shop, and a small store. At this early hour no sign of life was visible, not even a dog barked, and I followed the poorly marked road, which circled sharply to the left for a hundred yards, and ended at the water's edge. So far as could be discovered the opposite bank was equally deserted, and, after permitting the roan to drink all I considered safe in his heated condition, I made the passage, the water where deepest wetting the horse's belly. The main roadway led directly [ 82 ]