—I am glad you are not like her, Hildegarde. I couldn't stand it."
And Hildegarde, looking up at him, said, "Oh, I wish she had stayed with you."
"And I! You have brought it all back to me—her kneeling there—and the love she gave me."
If Carew had been always like that—revealing his gentler self, Hildegarde would soon have bestowed upon him an unquestioning devotion. But there were other moments when he was cynical, hard, irritable. Moments when Meriweather warned her:
"In a mood like this it is better to let him alone."
In the days preceding the election, Carew had many moods.
"If it goes against him," Miss Anne said, "there won't be any living with him."
There were to be six of them on election night at the dinner at the Hulburts'. Neale Winslow made up the quota of men, with Mrs. Hulburt, Sally, and Hildegarde as the only women.
Miss Anne had gone to Baltimore to help there with the women's vote. Delia and Sampson were whirling around the county in their little car, excitedly, in opposition to the white families for whom they and their kind had always worked. Only in this one thing did they differ, and for them election day was the one echo of emancipation.
It was on the ride over to the Hulburts' that Carew discovered his daughter's politics were not his own.
"Do you mean that if you were old enough, you'd vote the other way?"
"Yes."
