They rode together under the trees along the winding country roads, but never without the presence of some older relative whose supervision was conventional if careless.

They met under the honeysuckles on the gallery of the Beauchamp home, where the air was sweet with the fragrance of the near-by orchards, but with correct gallantry Henry Fairfax paid his court rather to the mother than to the daughter.

The hands of the lovers had touched, their eyes had momentarily encountered, but their lips had never met.

Over the young girl's soul there sat still the unbroken mystery of life; nor had the reverent devotion of the boy yet learned love's iconoclasm.
For two years Colonel Fairfax had been with his regiment, fighting for what he considered the welfare of his country and for the institutions in whose justice he had been taught to believe.

There remained at the old Fairfax home in Louisburg only the wife of Colonel Fairfax and the son Henry, the latter chafing at a part which seemed to him so obviously ignoble.