Insolence, as if all women were his property to be enjoyed in his

own good time. Only with Melanie was this look absent. There was

never that cool look of appraisal, never mockery in his eyes, when

he looked at Melanie; and there was an especial note in his voice

when he spoke to her, courteous, respectful, anxious to be of

service.

"I don't see why you're so much nicer to her than to me," said

Scarlett petulantly, one afternoon when Melanie and Pitty had

retired to take their naps and she was alone with him.

For an hour she had watched Rhett hold the yarn Melanie was

winding for knitting, had noted the blank inscrutable expression

when Melanie talked at length and with pride of Ashley and his

promotion. Scarlett knew Rhett had no exalted opinion of Ashley

and cared nothing at all about the fact that he had been made a

major. Yet he made polite replies and murmured the correct things

about Ashley's gallantry.

And if I so much as mention Ashley's name, she had thought

Irritably, he cocks his eyebrow up and smiles that nasty, knowing

smile!

"I'm much prettier than she is," she continued, "and I don't see

why you're nicer to her."

"Dare I hope that you are jealous?"

"Oh, don't presume!"

"Another hope crushed. If I am 'nicer' to Mrs. Wilkes, it is

because she deserves it. She is one of the very few kind, sincere

and unselfish persons I have ever known. But perhaps you have

failed to note these qualities. And moreover, for all her youth,

she is one of the few great ladies I have ever been privileged to

know."

"Do you mean to say you don't think I'm a great lady, too?"

"I think we agreed on the occasion of our first meeting that you

were no lady at all."

"Oh, if you are going to be hateful and rude enough to bring that

up again! How can you hold that bit of childish temper against

me? That was so long ago and I've grown up since then and I'd

forget all about it if you weren't always harping and hinting

about it."

"I don't think it was childish temper and I don't believe you've

changed. You are just as capable now as then of throwing vases if

you don't get your own way. But you usually get your way now.

And so there's no necessity for broken bric-a-brac."

"Oh, you are--I wish I was a man! I'd call you out and--"

"And get killed for your pains. I can drill a dime at fifty

yards. Better stick to your own weapons--dimples, vases and the

like."

"You are just a rascal."

"Do you expect me to fly into a rage at that? I am sorry to

disappoint you. You can't make me mad by calling me names that are

true. Certainly I'm a rascal, and why not? It's a free country and

a man may be a rascal if he chooses. It's only hypocrites like you,

my dear lady, just as black at heart but trying to hide it, who

become enraged when called by their right names."

She was helpless before his calm smile and his drawling remarks,

for she had never before met anyone who was so completely

impregnable. Her weapons of scorn, coldness and abuse blunted

in her hands, for nothing she could say would shame him. It had

been her experience that the liar was the hottest to defend his

veracity, the coward his courage, the ill-bred his gentlemanliness,

and the cad his honor. But not Rhett. He admitted everything and

laughed and dared her to say more.

He came and went during these months, arriving unheralded and

leaving without saying good-by. Scarlett never discovered just

what business brought him to Atlanta, for few other blockaders

found it necessary to come so far away from the coast. They

landed their cargoes at Wilmington or Charleston, where they were

met by swarms of merchants and speculators from all over the South

who assembled to buy blockaded goods at auction. It would have

pleased her to think that he made these trips to see her, but even

her abnormal vanity refused to believe this. If he had ever once

made love to her, seemed jealous of the other men who crowded

about her, even tried to hold her hand or begged for a picture or

a handkerchief to cherish, she would have thought triumphantly he

had been caught by her charms. But he remained annoyingly

unloverlike and, worst of all, seemed to see through all her

maneuverings to bring him to his knees.

Whenever he came to town, there was a feminine fluttering. Not

only did the romantic aura of the dashing blockader hang about him

but there was also the titillating element of the wicked and the

forbidden. He had such a bad reputation! And every time the

matrons of Atlanta gathered together to gossip, his reputation

grew worse, which only made him all the more glamorous to the

young girls. As most of them were quite innocent, they had heard

little more than that he was "quite loose with women"--and exactly

how a man went about the business of being "loose" they did not

know. They also heard whispers that no girl was safe with him.

With such a reputation, it was strange that he had never so much

as kissed the hand of an unmarried girl since he first appeared in

Atlanta. But that only served to make him more mysterious and

more exciting.

Outside of the army heroes, he was the most talked-about man in

Atlanta. Everyone knew in detail how he had been expelled from

West Point for drunkenness and "something about women." That

terrific scandal concerning the Charleston girl he had compromised

and the brother he had killed was public property. Correspondence

with Charleston friends elicited the further information that his

father, a charming old gentleman with an iron will and a ramrod

for a backbone, had cast him out without a penny when he was

twenty and even stricken his name from the family Bible. After

that he had wandered to California in the gold rush of 1849 and

thence to South America and Cuba, and the reports of his

activities in these parts were none too savory. Scrapes about

women, several shootings, gun running to the revolutionists in

Central America and, worst of all, professional gambling were