exquisite fineness that in the dim light of her drawing-room they seemed
but an added gloss.

From behind the massive coffee urn at the head of her table she regarded
her boarders as so many beneficiaries upon her bounty. When she passed a
cup of coffee she seemed to confer an honour; when she returned a
receipted bill it was as if she repulsed an insult. People said that she
had been born to greatness and that she had never adapted herself to the
obscurity that had been thrust upon her--but they said it when her back
was turned. To her face the subject was never broached, and her former
prosperity was ignored along with her present poverty. Of her own
sorrows she, herself, made no mention. When she spoke from the depths of
her bitterness of the war and the ruin it had left, her resentment was
general rather than personal. Above the mantel in her room hung the
sword of Julius Webb, sheathed under the tattered colours of the
Confederate States. At her throat she wore a button that had been cut
from a gray coat, and, once, after the close of the war, she had pointed
to it before a Federal officer, and had said: "Sir, the women of the
South have never surrendered!" The officer had looked at the face above
the button as he answered: "Madam, had the women of the South fought its
battles, surrender would have been for the men of the North." But Jane
Webb had smiled bitterly in silence. To her the Federal officer was but
an individual member of a national army of invasion, and the rights of
the victors, the wrongs of Virginia.

Her neighbours regarded her with almost passionate pride--rebuking their
more generous natures by the sight of her unbowed beauty and her
solitary revolt. When young Dudley grew old enough to attend school the
general and the judge called together upon his mother and offered, with
hesitancy, to undertake his education.

"He is only a year or two older than my Tom," began the judge, tripping
in his usually steady speech. "I assure you it will give me pleasure to
have the boys thrown together."

Mrs. Webb bowed in unaffirmative fashion.

"On my life, ma'am, I can't forget that Julius Webb fell at Brandy
Station," put in the general hotly. "Your husband died for Virginia, and
your boy shall not want while I have a penny in my pocket. I'll send him
to college with Bernard, and feel it to be a privilege!"

Mrs. Webb bowed again.

"A great privilege, ma'am," protested the general, uneasily.

Mrs. W