It was a new, but graphic, expression to him; and he often remembered
it afterward, and how quaintly it fell from her lips as she stood there
in the light of the kerosene lamp, slim, self-possessed, in her faded
gingham gown and apron, the shapely middle finger of one little
weather-tanned hand resting on the edge of the cloth.
"You are Miss Herold, I suppose?" he said, looking up at her with his
pleasant smile.
"Yes."
"You are not Southern?"
"No," she said briefly. And he then remembered that the Hon. Cicero W.
Gilkins, when he was president of the now defunct club, had installed a
Northern man as resident chief game-protector and superintendent at the
Foam Island Club House.
Marche had never even seen Herold; but, through lack of personal
interest, and also because he needed somebody to look out for the
property, he had continued to pay this man Herold his inconsiderable
salary every year, scarcely knowing, himself, why he did not put the
Foam Island shooting on the market and close up the matter for good.
"It's been five years since I was here, Miss Herold," he said, smiling.
"That was in the old days of the club, when Judge Gilkins and Colonel
Vyse used to come here shooting every season. But you don't remember
them, I fancy."
"I remember them."
"Really! You must have been quite a child."
"I was thirteen."
"Oh, then you are eighteen, now," he said humorously.
Her grave, young lips were only slightly responsive to his smile.
"You have been here a long time," he said. "Do you find it lonely?"
"Sometimes," she admitted.
"What do you do for recreation?"
"I don't think I know what you mean, Mr. Marche."
"I mean for pleasure."
She looked at him out of her clear, gray eyes, then turned her gaze on
the window. But she could not see through it; the pane only reflected
her face darkly; and to her, for a moment, it seemed that way with her
whole pent-up life, here in the Virginia marshes--no outlet, no outlook,
and wherever she turned her wistful eyes only her own imprisoned self to
confront her out of the dull obscurity.
"I suppose," he said, watching her, "that you sometimes go to Norfolk
for a holiday?"
"No."
"Or to Old Point, or Baltimore, perhaps?"
She had her under lip between her teeth, now, and was looking so fixedly
at the window that he thought she had not heard him.