Landtakers: The Story of an Epoch

After the night of the flood we see Emma in fugitive pictures only-- a little woman eternally occupied, leaning her flushed face over the camp-oven in the barn-like kitchen, peering through the window at an unknown stranger, setting out on horseback to answer the summons of another confinement at the Bellamys'--and always in a faded blue dress, plain and long-waisted after the old-fashioned style of the early 'forties. A woman who rarely speaks, but not at all a quiet woman. There is something insect-like in her obstinate, slow will.

Cabell fought it in vain, yet often with the illusion of victory. Their first contest was over the sheep he had promised Dirk, and Sambo preserved an admiring memory of her feeling the tail, along the back, looking into the mouth of each of the thousand ewes Cabell at last reluctantly drafted from his flocks, quietly and firmly rejecting every decrepit cull he tried to pass off. After this Cabell made every improvement in the house and their way of living a ground for battle. Without quite understanding, he felt the destructive power of the comfort she brought to Cabell's Reach-- destructive to that part of him which lived most vitally in discontent.