They walked through the spring sunshine and folks thought what a fine couple they made; a handsome southern officer and his beautiful, graceful girl who, flushed with wine, laughed beside her man. Sally even danced a few steps as she imagined what happiness these next months would bring. She would be a respectable lady, with her own slaves and living in luxury. When Sally had been small her mother would sometimes talk about the fine houses of the wealthy and how they had candles in every room and feather mattresses on every bed and ate off golden plates and never knew what the cold was. Their water did not come from a stream that froze in winter, their beds had no lice and their hands were never chipped and sore like Sally’s. Now Sally would live just like that. “Robert said I’d be happy if I just stopped dreaming,” she confided in her lover, “and if he could see me now!”

“Did you tell him you were coming here?” Ridley asked.

“Of course not! I’m not wanting to see him ever again. Not till I’m a great lady and then I’ll let him open my carriage door and he won’t even know who I am.” She laughed at that fine revenge on her previous poverty. “Is that your brother’s coach?”

They had come to the corner of Cary Street and Twenty-fourth. It was a grim quarter of town, close to the York River Railroad that lay between the cobbled street and the rocky riverbank. Ridley had explained to Sally that his brother did business in this part of town, which is why they needed to walk through its streets. Now, on the point of ridding himself of the girl, he felt a pang of remorse. Her company this afternoon had been light and easy, her laughter unforced, and the glances of other men in the streets had been flatteringly jealous. Then Ridley thought of her ambition that was so unrealistic and of the threat she represented, and so he hardened his heart to the inevitable. “That’s the carriage,” he said, guessing that the big, ugly, close-curtained coach was indeed Delaney’s vehicle, though there was no sign of Delaney himself. Instead there was a massive Negro on the box and two gaunt sway-backed horses in the dilapidated harness.

The Negro looked down at Ridley. “You Mister Ridley, Massa?”

“Yes.” Ridley felt Sally’s hands clutch fearfully at his arm.

The Negro knocked twice on the coach roof and the curtained door opened to reveal a thin, middle-aged white man with a gap-toothed grin, dirty hair and a walleye. “Mister Ridley. And you must be Miss Truslow?”

“Yes.” Sally was nervous.