As she chattered and laughed and cast quick glances into the house and the yard, her eyes fell on a stranger, standing alone in the hall, staring at her in a cool impertinent way that brought her up sharply with a mingled feeling of feminine pleasure that she had attracted a man and an embarrassed sensation that her dress was too low in the bosom. He looked quite old, at least thirty-five.He was a tall man and powerfully built.Scarlett thought she had never seen a man with such wide shoulders, so heavy with muscles, almost too heavy for gentility.When her eye caught his, he smiled, showing animal-white teeth below a close-clipped black mustache.He was dark of face, swarthy as a pirate, and his eyes were as bold and black as any pirate's appraising a galleon to be scuttled or a maiden to be ravished.There was a cool recklessness in his face and a cynical humor in his mouth as he smiled at her, and Scarlett caught her breath.She felt that she should be insulted by such a look and was annoyed with herself because she did not feel insulted.She did not know who he could be, but there was undeniably a look of good blood in his dark face.It showed in the thin hawk nose over the full red lips, the high forehead and the wide-set eyes.
She dragged her eyes away from his without smiling back, and he turned as someone called:“Rhett!Rhett Butler!Come here!I want you to meet the most hard-hearted girl in Georgia.”
Rhett Butler?The name had a familiar sound, somehow connected with something pleasantly scandalous, but her mind was on Ashley and shedismissed the thought.
“I must run upstairs and smooth my hair,”she told Stuart and Brent, who were trying to get her cornered from the crowd.“You boys wait for me and don't run off with any other girl or I'll be furious.”
She could see that Stuart was going to be difficult to handle today if she flirted with anyone else. He had been drinking and wore the arrogant looking-for-a-fight expression that she knew from experience meant trouble.She paused in the hall to speak to friends and to greet India who was emerging from the back of the house, her hair untidy and tiny beads of perspiration on her forehead.Poor India!It would be bad enough to have pale hair and eyelashes and a jutting chin that meant a stubborn disposition, without being twenty years old and an old maid in the bargain.She wondered if India resented very much her taking Stuart away from her.Lots of people said she was still in love with him, but then you could never tell what a Wilkes was thinking about.If she did resent it, she never gave any sign of it, treating Scarlett with the same slightly aloof, kindly courtesy she had always shown her.
Scarlett spoke pleasantly to her and started up the wide stairs. As she did, a shy voice behind her called her name and, turning, she saw Charles Hamilton.He was a nice-looking boy with a riot of soft brown curls on his white forehead and eyes as deep brown, as clean and as gentle as a collie dog's.He was well turned out in mustard-colored trousers and black coat and his pleated shirt was topped by the widest and most fashionable of black cravats.A faint blush was creeping over his face as she turned, for he was timid with girls.Like most shy men he greatly admired airy, vivacious, always-at-ease girls like Scarlett.She had never given him more than perfunctory courtesy before, and so the beaming smile of pleasure with which she greeted him and the two hands outstretched to his almost took his breath away.
“Why, Charles Hamilton, you handsome old thing, you!I'll bet you came all the way down here from Atlanta just to break my poor heart!”
Charles almost stuttered with excitement, holding her warm little hands in his and looking into the dancing green eyes. This was the way girls talked to other boys but never to him.He never knew why but girls always treated him like a younger brother and were very kind, but never bothered to tease him.Hehad always wanted girls to flirt and frolic with him as they did with boys much less handsome and less endowed with this world's goods than he.But on the few occasions when this had happened he could never think of anything to say and he suffered agonies of embarrassment at his dumbness.Then he lay awake at night thinking of all the charming gallantries he might have employed;but he rarely got a second chance, for the girls left him alone after a trial or two.
Even with Honey, with whom he had an unspoken understanding of marriage when he came into his property next fall, he was diffident and silent. At times, he had an ungallant feeling that Honey's coquetries and proprietary airs were no credit to him, for she was so boy-crazy he imagined she would use them on any man who gave her the opportunity.Charles was not excited over the prospect of margying her, for she stirred in him none of the emotions of wild romance that his beloved books had assured him were proper for a lover.He had always yearned to be loved by some beautiful, dashing creature full of fire and mischief.
And here was Scarlett O'Hara teasing him about breaking her heart!
He tried to think of something to say and couldn't, and silently he blessed her because she kept up a steady chatter which relieved him of any necessity for conversation. It was too good to be true.
“Now, you wait right here till I come back, for I want to eat barbecue with you. And don't you go off philandering with those other girls, because I'm mighty jealous,”came the incredible words from red lips with a dimple on each side;and briskly black lashes swept demurely over green eyes.
“I won't,”he finally managed to breathe, never dreaming that she was thinking he looked like a calf waiting for the butcher.