"For being the founder of the democratic--"
"I thought so!" indignantly.
"Indeed! Oh! for founding the University of Virginia."
"You know your lesson quite well," with a little tinge of sarcasm; "if
you stay here long enough you'll find he did a great many other things.
Ah! he knew the beautiful. Look! were there ever any buildings more in
harmony, more exquisite in design, more fitted for living--Pshaw!" she
broke off petulantly at the young man's laugh, "you've made me boast!
You've seen Monticello?" she asked a little haughtily, as she
straightened from her leaning position.
"Of course."
The girl's eyes darkened as she stood looking down the campus from her
point of vantage, and though she was too proud to speak again of its
beauty--for it was her home--the young man's glances followed hers and
he noted it all; the inner quadrangle framed in its buildings of quaint
architecture, the velvet green of the campus, set with maples, and
dipping thrice and then deeply toward the gleaming buildings at the end;
the long stretch of corridors and white pillars, the professors' houses
rising two-storied above the students' homes: and about these, outside,
the wide grounds, the embowering trees, yellow and russet and red; rows
of cottages showing their tops here and there; and far off, rimming it
all, the misty, hazy mountain tops.
"I'm going into the library," announced Frances, all the banter gone
from her voice.
"Have you been to breakfast?" in astonishment.
"Haven't you? Oh! you are lazy! You must go at once. Mrs. Lancey won't
save it for you."
"Yes she will!" He followed her into the fairy white interior of the
Rotunda, with its great pillars bearing above their Corinthian pilasters
the carved circle on which were written the names of the giants of the
book world.
He had some faint desire to see before which of the cases she would
pause. He was proud of his knowledge of his fellow beings, but this
young woman puzzled him. It was a pleasure to his beauty-loving eyes to
gaze on her--tall, slender, but well set up, frank-eyed, clear-skinned
with an air of utter independence; the things he had heard her say and
seen her do kept her from any place in his category.
The long serge gown rustling softly on the marble pavement, she went
straight to the books she wanted. It was late, and she wished to avoid
the stream of students that would soon be setting roomwards and
hallwards.
She took down the volumes instantly--Fiske's "Old Virginia and her
Neighbors," and Byrd's "History of the Dividing Line." If Lawson was
astonished she gave him no chance to express it.
"You must hurry to breakfast," she insisted as they went out.
The young man looked down at the sunlit quadrangle. "Won't you go for a
drive about ten?" he asked abruptly.
"I'm going."