WEDDING RING
389
ru,
before he was often with him in field sports, gambling, drinking,
and race-going. He learned, he says, to "wear his brow unwrinkled,"
to accept the condition of things.
As
for Annabelle Trice, he says
that sometimes looking back, he could scarcely persuade himself that
"she had shed tears". She was, he says, "of a warm nature, reckless
and passionate of disposition, hating all mention of the future (she
would never let me mention times to come) , agile, resourceful, and
cneerful in devising to gratify our appetites, but with a womanly ten–
derness such as any man might prize at a sanctified hearthside." She
must indeed have been agile and resourceful, for to carry on such a
liaison undetected in that age and place must have been a problem.
There was a kind of summer house at the foot of the Trice garden,
which one could enter unobserved from an alley. Some of their meet–
ings occurred there. A half-sister of Annabelle Trice, who lived in
Lexington, apparently assisted the lovers or winked at their relation–
ship, but, it seems, only after some pressure by Annabelle, for Cass
hints at "a stormy scene." So some of the meetings were there. But
now and then Duncan Trice had to be out of town on business, and
on those occasions Cass would be aclrnltted, late at night, to the house,
even during a period when Annabelle's mother and father were stay–
mg there; so he actually lay in the very bed belonging to Duncan
Trice.
There were, however, other meetings, unplanned and unpredict–
able moments snatched when they found themselves left alone to–
gether. "Scarce a corner, cranny, or protected nook or angle of my
fiiend's trusting house did we not at one time or another defile, and
that even in the full and shameless light of day," Cass wrote in the
journal, and when Jack Burden, the student of history, went to Lex–
ington and went to see the old Trice home he remembered the sen–
tence. The town had grown up around the house, and the gardens,
except for a patch of lawn, were gone. But the house was well main–
tained (some people named Miller lived there and by and large re–
sp:::cted the place) and J ad: Burden was permitted to inspect the
premises.
He
wandered about the room where the first meeting had
taken place and she had raised her eyes to Cass Mastern above the
newly lighted candles and where, a year later, she had uttered the
sigh, or suppressed moan, and stepped to his arms; and out into the
hall, which was finely proportioned and with a graceful stair; and
into a small, shadowy library; and to a kind of back hall, which was
a well "protected nook or angle" and had, as a matter of fact, fur–
niture adequate to the occasion. Jack Burden stood in the main hall,
