It was a scene the young man had not yet gotten used to, nor the girl either, though she was born in its sight. Beyond the stretch of the outer grounds of the University, beyond the far-reaching roofs and spires of Charlottesville and the narrow valley of the Rapidan, rose, high and bold, the last spur of the Ragged Mountains. The blue haze veiled it even at this early hour; the frost clothing much of it showed all colors save those of sombre hue; and, set on its crown, just where it began to dip downwards, shone the whiteness of Monticello.
"He was a great man!" said the young man presently.
The girl nodded. No one ever sat thus, the buildings of the University stretching at their feet, Monticello gleaming on its mountain crest and asked the name of the man they lauded.
By and by she asked a question. "For what is Jefferson noted?"
"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."
He caught his breath, but before he could answer—
"Susan wants some chickens. I promised her I'd get them. You are not going out?" severely.
"It's such a temptation!"
"Young men who come all the way from Oregon come to study."
He strove for answer, but the young woman's nod was positive. It sent him to the mess hall, while she hurried along the corridor, hurried to avoid the crowd that would soon be abroad. So she had been trained, and such was second nature. She was not afraid of any student or of all of them. She had had delightful friends among them. But she was not a students' belle; her dear father's abhorrence of such had kept her unscathed.
She lived among them, but the traditions of her household kept her apart. She was motherless, but her mother's influence had set her feet in the path of freedom and her father saw to it that they kept their way. In all the gay students' life that surged about her she was somehow untouched. She was keenly alive to its phases, to all the life as a whole, but not to any unit forming it. She saw the belles of the season come and go at Christmas, at Easter, or the Finals, without the least desire to outshine them, or shine with them; yet it would have been easy enough had she wished it. Had she social aspirations she would find many matrons in the professors' homes to chaperon her; had she been sentimental she could have made many a bosom friend in the young girls of the town; had she been trained otherwise, her record from her first long skirt might have been one of reckless flirtations—for there is no limit to a student's daring—but as it was, she lived among them quite simply.
She ordered her father's house; she read, few knew how deeply; she rode, she drove, and went her own way happily.
One lesson she had at heart. She took the young men about her without an atom of seriousness. It was this which nettled Frank Lawson.
His attentions had been taken quite seriously usually, too seriously once, he might have remembered. It aroused his insistence; it sent him loitering by the gate to the grounds when Frances came driving down the ribbony road winding outwards.
"I think you might take me," he declared, as she drove slowly by.
"Jump in!" Frances pulled the horse around and left the wheels towards him hospitably opened.
Lawson thought of the beauty he had driven the afternoon before, of the roses on her breast for which she had thanked him so graciously, of the shining skins of his horses and the glittering wheels of his carriage, and he set his teeth; but he climbed up into the trap and sat down by Frances' side.
She did not offer him the reins, and he hated being driven by a woman.
"You know most of the roads about here?"
The young man assented.
"Out towards Monticello and down beyond the University and Park Street; but you don't know this."
Frances had turned towards town, and was driving smartly past Chancellor's and Anderson's, bookstore and drug store and loitering grounds of the students, though the porches were empty now, along the long street, across the high bridge spanning the narrow valley through which the Southern railroad swept into the town, on down a steep hill; and then she pulled sharply to the left, down a rough road past negro cabins, another sharp hill, across a clear mountain stream, and they were in the country.
"You've never been this way before," repeated Frances as she began to point out the features of the country. She spoke of house and cabin and mill; but Lawson's eyes were turned towards the misty mountains. The keen air blew in his face, the frosty touch sent his pulses tingling: the smell of green grass and falling leaves and fresh earth was abroad, and over there, to right to left, swam the mountain-tops in purple mists. Each hill they topped showed vistas of hill and valley and far-reaching crest.
The horse went at a good pace; his driver was the most companionable of drivers; Lawson was absurdly happy.
"What's that little blue flower?" he asked, pointing to a starry bloom, daisy-shaped, blossoming on a weed-like stem.
"That's another of the beauties for which we thank Jefferson, that and the Scotch broom in the woods;