"I have been afraid that the sights you see here, after the good instructions I have given you, might make you an infidel."

"What is an infidel?"

"One who, being unable to explain certain evils in life, refuses to believe anything. That is the case with Van Dorn, a very bad man. Stepfather Joe is always conservative on that subject. Deviate as much as he may, he never disbelieves. Aunt Patty, too, erratic as she is, holds a conservative position on a Great First Cause."

Here McLane drew out his gold spectacles, and turned the leaves of his Bible over, and pointed Hulda a place to read, beginning, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." At his command she read it, with faith, yet observation, her mind being fully alert to the warning Van Dorn had left her, that in his absence her great trial was to be.

McLane was wearing a gray English suit, with full round paunch, sleek all over the body, his hair a little gray, his gold glasses dangling in his hand, patent varnished slippers and silk stockings, and a silk scarf and cameo pin in it, and a cameo of his deceased sister upon his finger-ring, marking his attire; his eyes, of a pop kind, much too far forward, and blue as old china, and yet an animal, not a spiritual blue - the tint of washing-blue, not of distance; a hare-lip somewhere in his talk, though the fulness of his very red lips hardly allowed place for it; and his nose and brows stern and military, as if he had been a pudding stamped with the die of a Roman emperor or General Jackson.

He watched her reading with censorship, yet desire, patronage, and oiliness together.

Glancing up when she had read far enough, Hulda thought he was looking at her as if she was some rarer kind of negress.

"Beautifully read, Hulda! I never go to such places as theatres, but you might be, I should say, an actress. Don't think of it, however! Very unconservative profession! I take great pride in you, my lovely girl; suppose I take you home with me!"

He walked to her stool, and laid his warm hand on her neck, standing behind her; she did not move nor change color.

"Something has happened to me, Colonel McLane," Hulda spoke, clear as a bell out of a prison, "to make even Johnson's Cross Roads good and happy. Can you guess what it is?"

She bent her head back, and looked up fearlessly at him, as if he were the negro now.

"Not religious ecstasy?" he said. "Not camp-meeting or revival conversion, I hope. That's vile."

"No, Colonel. It is knowing a pure young man, whose love for me is natural and unselfish."

"Great God!" spoke McLane, removing his hand. "Not some kidnapper?"

"No," Hulda said, "no slave-dealer of any kind. They cannot make him so. He is perfectly conservative, Colonel, as to that vileness. I believe he is a gentleman, too."

"You must have great experience in that article," he sneered, looking angry at her.