She gathered a handful of violets and buried her face in them. Fragrance as always gave her keen sensuous joy. Then, spying a charming red-berried vine, she tucked the violets into her bodice, and darted through tangled bushes to reach the vine. She stretched out her hand to pluck when a peculiar noise stopped her. A dry, sharp sound from the ground beside her foot, half rustle and half rattle. Puzzled, she searched for its source. Again came the noise, and turning her head she gave a moan of fear. Her heart stopped beating, sweat broke out on her forehead. Not two feet from her lay coiled an enormous mottled snake. She froze into a block of terror, motionless as the trees around her except for the tiny chattering of her teeth. And her paralysis saved her. The rattlesnake slowly uncoiled and glided away into the underbrush.

Sobbing, stumbling, she fled back to the path, to the safety of the dusty plantation road. As her terror subsided, her gratitude for deliverance left one violent emotion behind: a loathing for this treacherous country. Her one effort to appreciate its beauties had been too brutally thwarted.

She was to endure some more years of it, to accept it, and even to some extent to look upon it as home. But peculiarly sensitive to her environment, she had felt from her first glimpse that the Waccamaw Neck was hostile to her, and now she was sure of it. She told no one of her experience, knowing only too well that there would be scant sympathy, and that, in Joseph's case, fears for her safety would react as anger. But she never walked alone in the woods again.

Theo escaped that summer as she-had planned and spent a few happy weeks with Aaron at Richmond Hill. Soon after her arrival, Natalie sailed for France to see her mother from whom she had been separated for six years. Theo missed her adopted sister, yet it was delightful to be entirely alone with Aaron. Almost she could forget that she was a wife. The Waccamaw Neck blurred into unimportance.

In August, however, Joseph arrived in his own carriage, and this time with a full retinue of servants: a pleasanter, more tolerant Joseph. He had missed her more than he had thought possible, and during her absence it had even occurred to him that she had not been entirely happy on the Waccamaw. He had puzzled over this, finally admitting to himself that for a girl unused to a large family, his had perhaps been a bit overpowering. Accordingly he had ridden to the Oaks, decided upon the necessary improvements, and given orders for work to begin.

'When we return South, we shall move into the Oaks,' he told her. 'I am having the establishment enlarged so that it will be fitting for people in our position.'