Little Steve slid under the outstretched arm that menaced him and fled to the dining-room.
Betty came slowly down the stairs.

Four hours since Jeff had ridden away with the letter.

Already there had come to her moments when, she would have given much could she have recalled it, when she knew with dread certainty that whatever her feeling for Charley, it was not love; moments when she realized that she had been cruelly driven by circumstances into a situation that offered no escape.
"Mas'r Tom he say he won't come in to supper, Missy; he 'low he's powerful busy, gittin' ready to go to Memphis in the mo'ning," explained Steve, as he followed Betty into the dining-room.
His mistress nodded indifferently as she seated herself at the table; she was glad to be alone just then; she was in no mood to carry on the usual sluggish conversation with Tom; her own thoughts absorbed her more and more they became terrifying things to her.
She ate her supper with big Steve standing behind her chair and little Steve balancing himself first on one foot and then on the other near the door.

Little Steve's head was on a level with the chair rail and but for the rolling whites of his eyes he was no more than a black shadow against the walnut wainscoting; he formed the connecting link between the dining-room and the remote kitchen.

Betty suspected that most of the platters journeyed down the long corridor deftly perched on top of his woolly head.