John Henry's ring, darling. Are you ready?" asked Mrs.
Pendleton.

"In a minute. Is the rose right in my hair?" replied Virginia, turning
her profile towards her mother, while she flung a misty white scarf over
her shoulders.

"Quite right, dear. I hope you will have a lovely time. I shall sit up
for you, so you needn't bother to take a key."

"But you'll be so tired. Can't you make her go to bed, father?"

"I couldn't close my eyes till I knew you were safely home, and heard
how you'd enjoyed yourself," answered Mrs. Pendleton, as they slowly
descended the staircase, Virginia leading the way, and the rest
following in a procession behind her. Turning at the gate, with her arm
in John Henry's, the girl saw them standing in the lighted doorway, with
their tender gaze following her, and the faces of the little seamstress
and the two coloured servants staring over their shoulders. Trivial as
the incident was, it was one of the moments which stood out afterwards
in Virginia's memory as though a white light had fallen across it. Of
such simple and expressive things life is woven, though the years had
not taught her this on that May evening.

On the Goodes' lawn lanterns bloomed, like yellow flowers among the
branches of poplar trees, and beneath them Mrs. Goode and Abby--a loud,
handsome girl, with a coarsened complexion and a "sporting"
manner--received their guests and waved them on to a dancing platform
which had been raised between a rose-crowned summer-house and the old
brick wall at the foot of the garden. Ropes were stretched over the
platform, from the roof of the summer-house to a cherry tree at the end
of the walk, and on these more lanterns of red, blue, and yellow paper
were hanging. The air was scented with honeysuckle, and from an obscure
corner behind a trellis the sound of a waltz floated. As music it was
not of a classic order, but this did not matter since nobody was aware
of it; and Dinwiddie, which developed quite a taste for Wagner at the
beginning of the next century, could listen in the eighties with what
was perhaps a sincerer pleasure, to stringed instruments, a little
rough, but played with fervour by mulatto musicians. As Virginia drifted
off in John Henry's arms for the first dance, which she had promised
him, she thought: "I wonder if he will not come after all?" and a pang
shot through her heart where the daring joy had been only a moment
before. Then the music grew suddenly heavy while she