Just before Cissie passed in front of the Renfrew manor, womanlike, she paused to make some slight improvements in her appearance before walking under the eyes of her lover. She adjusted some strands of hair which had blown loose in the autumn wind, looked at herself in a purse mirror, retouched her nose with her greenish powder; then she picked a little sprig of sumac leaves that burned in the corner of a lawn and pinned its flame on the unashamed loveliness of her bosom.
This negro instinct for brilliant color is the theme of many jests in the South, but it is entirely justified esthetically, although the constant sarcasm of the whites has checked its satisfaction, if it has not corrupted the taste.
The bit of sumac out of which the octoroon had improvised a nosegay lighted up her skin and eyes, and created an ensemble as closely resembling a Henri painting as anything the streets of Hooker's Bend were destined to see.
But old Captain Renfrew was far from appreciating any such bravura in scarlet and gold. At first he put it down to mere niggerish taste, and his dislike for the girl edged his stricture; then, on second thought, the oddness of sumac for a nosegay caught his attention. Nobody used sumac for a buttonhole. He had never heard of any woman, white or black, using sumac for a bouquet. Why should this Cissie Dildine trig herself out in sumac?
The Captain's suspicions came to a point like a
