Instructive affairs.

Casting contemptuous glances at them, Scarlett thought that they

looked like a clump of fat crows. Married women never had any

fun. It did not occur to her that if she married Ashley she would

automatically be relegated to arbors and front parlors with staid

matrons in dull silks, as staid and dull as they and not a part of

the fun and frolicking. Like most girls, her imagination carried

her just as far as the altar and no further. Besides, she was too

unhappy now to pursue an abstraction.

She dropped her eyes to her plate and nibbled daintily on a beaten

biscuit with an elegance and an utter lack of appetite that would

have won Mammy's approval. For all that she had a superfluity of

beaux, she had never been more miserable in her life. In some way

that she could not understand, her plans of last night had failed

utterly so far as Ashley was concerned. She had attracted other

beaux by the dozens, but not Ashley, and all the fears of

yesterday afternoon were sweeping back upon her, making her heart

beat fast and then slow, and color flame and whiten in her cheeks.

Ashley had made no attempt to join the circle about her, in fact

she had not had a word alone with him since arriving, or even

spoken to him since their first greeting. He had come forward to

welcome her when she came into the back garden, but Melanie had

been on his arm then, Melanie who hardly came up to his shoulder.

She was a tiny, frailly built girl, who gave the appearance of a

child masquerading in her mother's enormous hoop skirts--an

Illusion that was heightened by the shy, almost frightened look in

her too large brown eyes. She had a cloud of curly dark hair

which was so sternly repressed beneath its net that no vagrant

tendrils escaped, and this dark mass, with its long widow's peak,

accentuated the heart shape of her face. Too wide across the

cheek bones, too pointed at the chin, it was a sweet, timid face

but a plain face, and she had no feminine tricks of allure to make

observers forget its plainness. She looked--and was--as simple as

earth, as good as bread, as transparent as spring water. But for

all her plainness of feature and smallness of stature, there was a

sedate dignity about her movements that was oddly touching and far

older than her seventeen years.

Her gray organdie dress, with its cherry-colored satin sash,

disguised with its billows and ruffles how childishly undeveloped

her body was, and the yellow hat with long cherry streamers made

her creamy skin glow. Her heavy earbobs with their long gold

fringe hung down from loops of tidily netted hair, swinging close

to her brown eyes, eyes that had the still gleam of a forest pool

In winter when brown leaves shine up through quiet water.

She had smiled with timid liking when she greeted Scarlett and

told her how pretty her green dress was, and Scarlett had been

hard put to be even civil in reply, so violently did she want to

speak alone with Ashley. Since then, Ashley had sat on a stool at

Melanie's feet, apart from the other guests, and talked quietly

with her, smiling the slow drowsy smile that Scarlett loved. What

made matters worse was that under his smile a little sparkle had

come into Melanie's eyes, so that even Scarlett had to admit that

she looked almost pretty. As Melanie looked at Ashley, her plain

face lit up as with an inner fire, for if ever a loving heart

showed itself upon a face, it was showing now on Melanie

Hamilton's.

Scarlett tried to keep her eyes from these two but could not, and

after each glance she redoubled her gaiety with her cavaliers,

laughing, saying daring things, teasing, tossing her head at their

compliments until her earrings danced. She said "fiddle-dee-dee"

many times, declared that the truth wasn't in any of them, and