Betty went up-stairs to her own room, where she tried to finish a
letter she had begun the day before to Judith Ferris, but she was
in no mood for this. She was owning to a sense of utter
depression and she had been at home less than a month. Struggle
as she might against the feeling, it was borne in upon her that
she was wretchedly lonely. She had seated herself by an open
window. Now, resting her elbows on the ledge and with her chin
between her palms, she gazed off into the still night. A mile
distant, on what was called "Shanty Hill," were the quarters of
the slaves. The only lights she saw were there, the only sounds
she heard reached her across the intervening fields. This was
her world. A half-savage world with its uncouth army of black
dependents.
Tom's words still rankled. Betty's temper flared up
belligerently as she recalled them. He had evidently meant to
insinuate that Charley had lied outright when he told her the
motive for the attack, and he had followed it up by that covert
slur on his character. Charley's devotion was the thing that
redeemed the dull monotony of existence. She became suddenly
humble and tenderly penitent in her mood toward him; he loved her
much better than she deserved, and she suspected that her own
attitude had been habitually ungenerous and selfish. She had
accepted all and yielded nothing. She wondered gravely why it
was she did not love him; she was fond of him--she was very, very
fond of him; she wondered if after all, as he said, this were not
the beginning of love, the beginning of that deeper feeling which
she was not sure she understood, not sure she should ever
experience.
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