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only Ashley you’re wanting, and you’ll not be having him. And if he wanted to marry you, ’twould be with misgivings that I’d say Yes, for all the fine friendship that’s between me and John Wilkes.” And, seeing her startled look, he continued: “I want my girl to be happy and you wouldn’t be happy with him.”

      “Oh, I would! I would!”

      “That you would not, daughter. Only when like marries like can there be any happiness.”

      “Our people and the Wilkes are different,” he went on slowly, fumbling for words. “They are queer folk, and it’s best that they marry their cousins and keep their queerness to themselves.”

      “Why, Pa, Ashley is not —”

      “I said nothing against the lad, for I like him. And when I say queer, it’s not crazy I’m meaning. But it’s neither heads nor tails I can make of most he says[12]. Now, Puss, tell me true, do you understand his folderol[13] about books and poetry and music and oil paintings and such foolishness?”

      “Oh, Pa,” cried Scarlett impatiently, “if I married him, I’d change all that!”

      “No wife has ever changed a husband, and don’t you be forgetting that. And as for changing a Wilkes, daughter! Look at the way they go to New York and Boston to hear operas and see oil paintings. And ordering French and German books from the Yankees! And there they sit reading and dreaming the dear God knows what, when they’d be better spending their time hunting and playing poker as proper men should.”

      “There’s nobody in the County who sits a horse better than Ashley. And as for poker, didn’t Ashley take two hundred dollars away from you just last week in Jonesboro?”

      “Yes, he can do all those things, but his heart’s not in it. That’s why I say he’s queer.”

      Scarlett was silent and her heart sank, for she knew Gerald was right.

      Gerald patted her arm and said: “There now, Scarlett! You admit ’tis true. And when I’m gone – darlin’, listen to me! I’ll leave Tara to you —”

      “I don’t want Tara or any old plantation. Plantations don’t mean anything when —”

      She was going to say “when you haven’t the man you want,” but Gerald got furious.

      “Do you stand there, Scarlett O’Hara, and tell me that Tara – that land – doesn’t mean anything?”

      Scarlett nodded obstinately. “Land is the only thing in the world,” he shouted, “worth working for, worth fighting for – worth dying for.”

      “Oh, Pa,” she said, “you talk like an Irishman!”

      “Have I ever been ashamed of it? No, ’tis proud I am. And don’t be forgetting that you are half Irish, Miss! And to anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them the land they live on is like their mother. ’Tis ashamed of you I am this minute.”

      Gerald had begun to work himself up into a rage when something in Scarlett’s face stopped him.

      “But there, you’re young. ’Twill come to you, this love of land, if you’re Irish. You’re just a child and bothered about your beaux. When you’re older, you’ll be seeing how ’tis…”

      By this time, Gerald was tired of the conversation and annoyed that the problem should be upon his shoulders.

      “Now, Miss. It doesn’t matter who you marry, as long as he thinks like you and is a gentleman and a Southerner. For a woman, love comes after marriage.”

      “Oh, Pa, that’s such an Old Country notion!”

      “And a good notion it is! All this American business of marrying for love, like servants, like Yankees! The best marriages are when the parents choose for the girl. For how can a silly piece like yourself tell a good man from a scoundrel?”

      Gerald looked at her bowed head.

      “It’s not crying you are?” he questioned, trying to turn her face upward.

      “No,” she cried, jerking away.

      “It’s lying you are, and I’m proud of it. And I want to see pride in you tomorrow at the barbecue.”

      Gerald took her arm and passed it through his.

      “We’ll be going in to supper now, and all this is between us. I’ll not be worrying your mother with this – nor do you do it either. Blow your nose, daughter.”

      They started up the dark drive arm in arm, the horse following slowly. Near the house, Scarlett saw her mother and behind her was Mammy, holding in her hand the black leather bag in which Ellen O’Hara always carried the bandages and medicines she used in doctoring the slaves.

      “Mr. O’Hara,” called Ellen as she saw the two coming up the driveway – Ellen belonged to a generation that was formal even after seventeen years of marriage – “Mr. O’Hara, there is illness at the Slattery house. Emmie’s baby has been born and is dying and must be baptized. I am going there with Mammy to see what I can do.”

      “In the name of God!” said Gerald. “Why should those white trash take you away just at your supper hour and just when I’m wanting to tell you about the war talk that’s going on in Atlanta! Go, Mrs. O’Hara. You’d not rest easy on your pillow the night if there was trouble and you not there to help.”

      “Take my place at the table, dear,” said Ellen, patting Scarlett’s cheek softly.

      Gerald helped his wife into the carriage and gave orders to the coachman to drive carefully.

      Then, smiling, in anticipation of one of his practical jokes: “Come daughter, let’s go tell Pork that instead of buying Dilcey, I’ve sold him to John Wilkes.”

      He had already forgotten Scarlett’s heartbreak. Scarlett slowly climbed the steps after him, her feet leaden. She thought that, after all, a mating between herself and Ashley could be no queerer than that of her father and Ellen Robillard O’Hara. As always, she wondered how her loud, insensitive father had managed to marry a woman like her mother, for never were two people more different.

      Chapter III

      Ellen O’Hara was thirty-two years old, and, according to the standards of her day, she was a middle-aged woman. From her French mother had come her dark eyes and her black hair; and from her father she had her long straight nose and her squarecut jaw. She would have been a beautiful woman had there been any glow in her eyes, any warmth in her smile. She never raised a voice in command to a servant or reproof to a child but it was obeyed instantly at Tara.

      As far back as Scarlett could remember, her mother had always been the same. She had never seen her mother sit down without a bit of needlework in her hands. Ellen moved about the house superintending the cooking, the cleaning and the clothes-making for the plantation.

      Sometimes when Scarlett went at night to kiss her mother’s cheek, she wondered if her mother had ever giggled or whispered secrets to intimate girl friends. But no, that wasn’t possible. Mother had always been just as she was, the one person who knew the answers to everything.

      But Scarlett was wrong, for, years before, Ellen Robillard of Savannah[14] had giggled as any fifteen-year-old and whispered with friends, telling all secrets but one. That was the year when Gerald O’Hara, twenty-eight years older than she, came into her life – the year, too, when her black-eyed cousin, Philippe Robillard, went out of it. For when Philippe left Savannah forever, he took with him the glow that was in Ellen’s heart and left for the bandy-legged little Irishman who married her only a gentle shell.

      But that was enough for Gerald. And if anything was gone from her, he never missed it. He knew that it was a miracle that he, an Irishman with no family and wealth, should win the daughter of one of the wealthiest and proudest families on the Coast. For Gerald was a self-made man.

      Gerald had come

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