re presented immediately
by Selim.

"Do take a hot one," urged Miss Matoaca anxiously, "yours is quite
cold."

I took a hot one, and after placing it on the small white and gold
plate, swore desperately to myself that I would not eat a mouthful in
that house until I could eat there as an equal. The faint wonder beneath
the pained fixed smile on Miss Mitty's face stabbed me like a knife. All
her anxious hospitality, all her offers of cream and partridges, could
not for a single minute efface it. Turning my head I discerned the same
expression, still fainter, still gentler, reflected on Miss Matoaca's
lips--as if some subtle bond of sympathy between them were asking
always, beneath the hereditary courtesy: "Can this be possible? Are we,
whose mother was a Fairfax, whose father was a Bland, sitting at our own
table with a man who is not a gentleman by birth?--who has even brought
a market basket to our kitchen door? What has become of the established
order if such a thing as this can happen to two unprotected Virginia
ladies?"

And it was quite characteristic of their race, of their class, that the
greater the wonder grew in their gentle minds, the more sedulously they
plied me with coffee and partridges and preserves--that the more their
souls abhorred me, the more lavish became their hands. Divided as they
were by their principles, something stronger than a principle now held
the sisters together, and this was a passionate belief in the integrity
of their race.

Again Selim handed the waffles in a frozen silence, and again Sally made
an unsuccessful attempt to produce an appearance of animation.

"Are you going to market, Aunt Matoaca?" she asked, "and will you
remember to buy seed for my canary?"

The flush in Miss Matoaca's cheek this time, I could not explain.

"Sister Mitty will go," she replied, in confusion, "I--I have another
engagement."

"She alludes to a meeting of one of her boards," observed Miss Mitty,
and turning to me she added, with what I felt to be an unfair thrust at
the shrinking bosom of Miss Matoaca, "My sister is a great reader, Mr.
Starr, and she has drawn many of her opinions out of books instead of
from life."

I looked up, my eyes met Miss Matoaca's, and I remembered her love
story.

"We all do that, I suppose," I answered. "Even when we get them from
life, haven't most of them had their beginning in books?"

"I am not a great reader myself," remarked Miss Mitty, a trifle primly.