Lauretta was anxious to regain her condition as an attractive woman and spent many hours of her days in intense self-grooming. She had picked up from her acting acquaintances a certain amount of reliable information as well as an uncertain amount of rumor and superstition, but aside from these, she had an instinct for doing what made her look and feel better and younger, and more the early Lauretta. She cultivated cleanliness as if it were the godly virtue it is reputed to be; but she did not entrust herself entirely to Heavenly care. She spent time before a glass with scissors and curlers and carmine and corn starch, testing, staring critically, changing here a lock of hair and there a blending of rouge and powder.

She spent other hours thinking about her past life and vowing to make that ahead better. She did not know yet what she intended to do with herself but, bored with the country, she gave in to glorious daydreams. On the solitary walks she had begun to take as the only way she could be sure of being quite alone, she dreamed of the outside, of the far and future world she would make.

On one of her walks in early November she met Bonard, who was walking too, but whose horse, it turned out, was tethered nearby. It was not coincidental that they met, for Bonard’s interest in her had sharpened since her arrival at Beulah Land in August and peaked since she delivered her child. He remembered the way she had flirted with him and Leon on their visit to Broughton Street when Selma was in Savannah to buy her wedding clothes.

When they met, however—and it was the third day in a row he had paced and lingered in that particular lane, having heard Leon casually refer to her walks and the fact that she walked out of the ordinary ways to avoid people—he was, or appeared to be all surprise and gallantry, at any rate as long as he could maintain the attitude.

“Miss Lauretta! You are out alone? Pray take my arm and lean as you step up to and over that log. You walk without even a dog to companion and protect you? This is monstrous neglect on the part of your hosts at Beulah Land! What if some churlish fellow were to apprehend you? Some fellow like me?”

Lauretta had begun to laugh, and when he paused in his speech, she threw back her head and let her laughter ring forth joyously to reward him for amusing her. He watched her with satisfaction, finally lifting his shoulders in an exaggerated gesture of acknowledgment that she had caught him out.

“You scoundrel!” she said delightedly. “How glad I am to see you! I have been so bored.”