Gone with the Wind / Унесённые ветром

She dragged her eyes away from his without smiling back, and he turned as someone called: “Rhett! Rhett Butler! Come here!”

Rhett Butler? The name had a familiar sound, somehow connected with something pleasantly scandalous, but her mind was on Ashley and she dismissed 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.

Scarlett 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 soft brown curls and deep brown eyes. A faint blush went over his face for he was timid with girls.

“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, 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. They always treated him like a younger brother.

Even with Honey, who he was going to marry when he came into his property next fall, he was shy and silent. And here was Scarlett O’Hara teasing him about breaking her heart!

“Now, you wait right here till I come back, for I want to eat barbecue with you. And don’t you go off flirting with other girls, because I’m mighty jealous,” came the incredible words from red lips with a dimple on each side.

Tapping him lightly on the arm with her folded fan, she turned to start up the stairs and her eyes again fell on the man called Rhett Butler who stood alone a few feet away from Charles.

Evidently he had overheard the whole conversation, for he grinned up at her.

In the bedroom, she found Cathleen Calvert standing before the mirror and biting her lips to make them look redder.

“Cathleen,” said Scarlett, “who is that nasty man downstairs named Butler?”

“My dear, he isn’t received!”

Scarlett digested this in silence, for she had never before been under the same roof with anyone who was not received.

It was very exciting.

“What did he do?”

“Oh, Scarlett, he has the most terrible reputation. His name is Rhett Butler and he’s from Charleston and his folks are some of the nicest people there, but they won’t even speak to him. He was expelled from West Point. Imagine! And then there was that business about the girl he didn’t marry.