At Fault by Kate Chopin

across the hills, but had heard the panting
of the blood-hounds, as the invisible pack swept by in hot pursuit of
the slave so long ago at rest.
    But it was "broad day," and here was nothing sinister to cause
Melicent the least little thrill of awe. No owl, no bat, no ill-omened
creature hovering near; only a mocking bird high up in the branches of
a tall pine tree, gushing forth his shrill staccatoes as blithely as
though he sang paeans to a translated soul in paradise.
    "Poor old McFarlane," said Melicent, "I'll pay a little tribute to his
memory; I dare say his spirit has listened to nothing but abuse of
himself there in the other world, since it left his body here on the
hill;" and she took one of the long-stemmed blood-red flowers and laid
it beside the toppling cross.
    "I reckon he's in a place w'ere flowers don't git much waterin', if
they got any there."
    "Shame to talk so cruelly; I don't believe in such places."
    "You don't believe in hell?" he asked in blank surprise.
    "Certainly not. I'm a Unitarian."
    "Well, that's new to me," was his only comment.
    "Do you believe in spirits, Grégoire? I don't—in day time."
    "Neva mine 'bout spirits," he answered, taking her arm and leading her
off, "let's git away f'om yere."
    They soon found a smooth and gentle slope where Melicent sat herself
comfortably down, her back against the broad support of a tree trunk,
and Grégoire lay prone upon the ground with—his head in Melicent's
lap.
    When Melicent first met Grégoire, his peculiarities of speech, so
unfamiliar to her, seemed to remove him at once from the possibility
of her consideration. She was not then awake to certain fine
psychological differences distinguishing man from man; precluding the
possibility of naming and classifying him in the moral as one might in
the animal kingdom. But short-comings of language, which finally
seemed not to detract from a definite inheritance of good breeding,
touched his personality as a physical deformation might, adding to it
certainly no charm, yet from its pathological aspect not without a
species of fascination, for a certain order of misregulated mind.
    She bore with him, and then she liked him. Finally, whilst indulging
in a little introspection; making a diagnosis of various symptoms,
indicative by no means of a deep-seated malady, she decided that she
was in love with Grégoire. But the admission embraced the
understanding with herself, that nothing could come of it. She
accepted it as a phase of that relentless fate which in pessimistic
moments she was inclined to believe pursued her.
    It could not be thought of, that she should marry a man whose
eccentricity of speech would certainly not adapt itself to the
requirements of polite society.
    He had kissed her one day. Whatever there was about the kiss—possibly
an over exuberance—it was not to her liking, and she forbade that he
ever repeat it, under pain of losing her affection. Indeed, on the few
occasions when Melicent had been engaged, kissing had been excluded as
superfluous to the relationship, except in the case of the young
lieutenant out at Fort Leavenworth who read Tennyson to her, as an
angel might be supposed to read, and who in moments of rapturous
self-forgetfulness, was permitted to kiss her under the ear: a
proceeding not positively distasteful to Melicent, except in so much
as it tickled her.
    Grégoire's hair was soft, not so dark as her own, and possessed an
inclination to curl about her slender fingers.
    "Grégoire," she said, "you told me once that the Santien boys were a
hard lot; what did you mean by that?"
    "Oh no," he answered, laughing good-humoredly up into her eyes, "you
did'n year me right. W'at I said was that we had a hard name in the
country. I don' see w'y eitha, excep' we all'ays done putty much like
we wanted. But my! a man can live like a saint yere at Place-du-Bois,
they ain't no temptations o' no kine."
    "There's little merit in your right doing, if you have no temptations
to