But disciplining him didn't look so repugnant as it usually did, not when the alternative was paying more of the bills that made her capital flow away like the waters of the Congaree -in fact, more swiftly than the lazy waters of the river. She nodded again. "Send him in."

"Yes, ma'am." Scipio turned and murmured to his companion in the hallway. Cassius showed himself for the first time. His shapeless cotton garments, brightened only by the blue bandanna he wore round his neck, made a sharp contrast to Scipio's formal livery.

Anne glared at Cassius for a few seconds without saying anything. Scipio silently slipped away, not wanting to hear-or to be known to hear- whatever punishment the mistress of Marshlands meted out. He respects Cassius' position on the plantation, too, Anne thought. Yes, she had to proceed with caution.

Cassius could not long bear up under her scrutiny. He cast his eyes down to the hardwood floor. Anne watched him intently. His gaze flicked to right and left, taking in the books that filled the office. She'd deliberately summoned him here, to add the intimidating alien environment to the moral effect of tak ing punishment from a white.

"What do you have to say for yourself?" she asked, her voice crisp and businesslike. "It had better be good."

He interlocked the fingers of his hands, a gesture almost prayerful in its supplication. "I is sorry, Miss Anne, I truly is," he said. "I couldn't he'p myself." The dialect of the Negroes of the Congaree district spilled thick as molasses from his lips. A white from Charleston would have had trouble understanding it; a white from, say, Birmingham would have been all at sea. So would a black from Birmingham, for that matter. Anne followed his speech as readily as she followed Scipio's formal, precise language. She'd grown up with the Negro dialect all around her. As a child, she'd spoken it half the time, till trained out of it by parents and teachers.

She didn't think of speaking it now. Using her own brand of English helped remind Cassius who was superior, who inferior. " 'Sorry' might be enough to make amends for being gone a day or two," she snapped. "You were gone for four mortal weeks. Where did you go? What did you do? Did you think you could just show up here again one day and go on about your business as if nothing had happened? Answer me!"

Cassius did some more hand-wringing. He was good at it -too good to be altogether convincing. He had a foxy gleam in his eye, too, one that never quite went away no matter how contrite and woebegone the rest of his face looked. "Whe' I was at? Miss Anne, I was up de country a ways. I was huntin'" He nodded in sudden assurance. "Dat's what I was doin'-huntin'."

"I don't believe a word of it," she answered. "If you wanted to go on a long hunting trip, you know you wouldn't have had any trouble arranging it with me. You've done that before -never for four weeks, but you've done it."

He hung his head again. Now she thought she recognized the expression on his face. If he'd been white, he would have blushed. After a long silence, he said, "Miss Anne, kin Ah talk to you like you was a man?"

Not a white man, she noted, just a man. A suspicion began forming in her mind. "Go ahead," she told him.

He twisted his hands once more, this time, she judged, in embarrassment. She wasn't a man; no one who was had any cause to doubt that. "Miss Anne," Cassius said, "what I huntin', she 'bout nineteen year ol', an' you kin put yo' han's roun' she waist" -he made a circle to show what he meant- "an' yo' fingers, dey touches theyselves. Dat's what I was huntin', fo' true."

Since he'd been gone that long, Anne reckoned he'd bagged her, too. He was a good deal more than nineteen -he was a good deal more than twice nineteen-but those things happened. She knew those things happened. She was still angry at the hunter, but not so angry as she had been. "What's her name?" she said. "Whereabouts exactly does she live? How did you meet her?"

"She name Drusilla, Miss Anne. She live on de Marberrys' plantation, over by Fo't Motte. She come into St. Matthews dis one time, I see she, I know I got to have she."

"And so you just went off after her." For all her effort, Anne couldn't make herself sound as severe as she would have liked. Men had their appetites, and whether they were white or black didn't seem to matter much there. A pretty face, a nice shape, and they were off like a shot. Sounding exasperated came easier: "I don't suppose anyone bothered checking your passbook?"

"No, ma'am." Cassius shook his head. But he might have said the same thing before the war. He was far and away the best hunter on the plantation; he was liable to make himself invisible to anyone who wanted to keep an eye on him.

Well, now that he'd come back, he wasn't invisible any more. Turning up the intensity of her glare, Anne said, "I am going to check on you. If I find out you are lying to me, you will regret it."

"I ain't lyin', Miss Anne. I is a truthful man."

"Scipio!" Anne called. When the butler came back, she said, "Take Cassius downstairs and have him wait there. We shall see what we shall see."

She picked up the telephone, rang Jubal Marberry's home, and put her questions to him. "What? Drusilla?" he said, shouting at her; he was old and deaf. "Yes, there's been some new buck nigger sniffing around Drusilla. There's always a buck or two sniffing around Drusilla, same as there's always flies buzzing around sugar water, heh, heh." The last was a wheezy chuckle. Anne wondered if Marberry was too old to go sniffing around Drusilla himself.

But that, whether or not it was his affair, was his concern. He'd told her what she needed to know. She summoned Cassius back to the office. "All right -it seems you were where you say you were. You could have gotten into worse mischief. Even so… Of course your pay for the time you were gone is gone, too." Cassius grimaced, but didn't say anything. Anne could have done worse. She did, in fact, do worse: "I'm also going to dock you every other week's pay for the next eight, to take out a matching sum. Losing both may remind you to stay here where you belong and not go chasing after every pretty woman you happen to see."

"Maybe, Miss Anne, but I doubts it." Cassius' grin was jaunty and very, very male. Anne wanted to throw something at him. Instead, she made a sharp gesture of dismissal. Grinning still, Cassius took his leave. Just like a nigger, she thought. Too happy-go-lucky to care he's thrown away two months' pay, plus whatever he wasted on that Drusilla tart. Anne hoped the Negro wench had soaked Cassius good.

She went back to her bill-paying. A few minutes later, the telephone rang. She was alert as she picked it up -maybe Jubal Marberry had done some more checking and found out that the Negro who'd been keeping Drusilla company wasn't Cassius after all. But the voice on the other end of the line wasn't old and rheumy, but young and vigorous: "Miss Anne? This here's Roger Kimball. I was just callin' to ask how your brother was doin'."

I was just calling to find out whether the coast is clear for me to go up there and sleep with you. Anne Colleton almost laughed in the submariner's face. She could have mortally offended him if she'd told him how much he reminded her of her black hunter. But, instead, she answered the question he'd asked: "I'm sorry, Roger; I'm afraid I have to tell you he's not much improved."

"Oh. I'm right sorry to hear that." Sorry both ways, probably, she thought; the wounded tone in his voice certainly suggested he was sorry she wasn't inviting him up despite poor Jacob's condition. And then he said, "Maybe you could come down to Charleston one day and pay me a visit, then."

Anne almost slammed down the earpiece of the telephone. The arrogance Kimball displayed infuriated her -but, as it had on the train to New Orleans, also attracted her. What with Jacob, what with the never-ending bills, what with escapades like Cassius', didn't she deserve a little amusement, a little escape, a little plain, old-fashioned physical relief? Life was about more things than simply running Marshlands. And so, instead of hanging up, she said, "Maybe I will, Roger. Maybe I will."