there are no specimens of that kind down here in Virginia, I am forced to the conclusion that this young Diana is simply the highly bred and carefully dame-nurtured daughter of one of the great plantation owners hereabouts, whose manner has acquired an extra stateliness from her embarrassment and shyness. Girls of fifteen or sixteen don’t know exactly where they stand. They are neither little girls nor young women. They have outgrown the license of the one state without having as yet acquired the liberty of action that belongs to the other.” Thus the youth’s thoughts wandered on. “That girl is a rigid disciplinarian,” he reflected. “How{24} sternly she required those hounds to sit on their haunches and take the punishment due to their sins! I’ll be bound she has herself been set in a corner for many a childish naughtiness. Yet she is not cruel. She struck each dog only a single blow—just punishment enough to secure better manners in future. An ill tempered woman would have lashed them more severely. And a woman less self-controlled would have struck out with her whip without making the dogs sit up and realize the enormity of their offence. A less well-bred girl would have said something to me in apology for her hounds’ misbehavior. This one was sufficiently sensible to see that unless I were a fool—in which case I should have been unworthy of attention—her disciplining of the dogs was apology enough without supplementary speech. I must find out who she is and make her acquaintance.”
{23}
{24}
Then a sudden thought struck him; “By Jove!” he exclaimed aloud, “I wonder if her name is Dorothy!”
Then the young man walked on.{25}
{25}
II WYANOKE
HALF an hour later Arthur Brent entered the house grounds of Wyanoke—the home of his ancestors for generations past and his own birthplace. The grounds about the mansion were not very large—two acres in extent perhaps—set with giant locust trees that had grown for a century or more in their comfortable surrounding of closely clipped and luxuriant green sward. Only three trees other than the stately locusts, adorned the house grounds. One of these was a huge elm, four feet thick in its stem, with great limbs, branching out in every direction and covering, altogether, a space of
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