ts she had witnessed. And though she was back in an
elder day, she glowed young as she talked, whether recalling official
solemnities or a once-cherished gown of embroidered tulle, caught up
with bunches of grapes. The girl's mouth was her's--fresh and full,
unlined by care.

It was not until she talked of later, younger days that her face took on
an old look.

"When our federated states rose up in their might," was a phrase that
brought the change. Thereafter she spoke in subdued tones of a time more
eventful than romantic, but still absorbing.

She remembered the words in which she felicitated General Pope Walker
for having issued the order to fire on Sumter. She gave details of the
privation that Richmond on her seven hills had suffered in the latter
days, and she made plain why their women should rise with their men to
drink certain toasts; how they, too, had sacrificed and toiled and
suffered with the same loyal tenacity. She mentioned "the present
government" casually, as the affair of a day; and spoke of "Mr. Lincoln,
their Northern President," in a tone implying confidence that I shared
her feeling for him.

As we went back to the drawing-room for coffee, she summed up herself to
me, though she thought to sum up more than herself.

"They swept us with the besom of war, Mr. Blake, and they
overwhelmed--but they could not subjugate us."

As she spoke, my eyes caught for the first time a portrait that hung on
the wall back of her. It was the portrait of one dark but fair, with
shoulders of a girlish slenderness all but thin, with eyes of glowing
dusk and a half-smile upon her lips. It was like my hostess in a fashion
of line and color, and yet enough unlike her so that I knew it must be
the daughter. The face was a shade narrower of chin, a bit longer, and
in some obscure differing of the features there was an effect of more
poise, almost of a maturer dignity, so that while I divined it was the
face of her daughter, it would seem to have been better planned for the
face of her mother.

She followed my eyes to the picture, and her face was still almost
stern from her last speech, though it is true that the sternness was a
dimpled sternness, for the chin of my hostess was rounded.

"They overwhelmed us, Mr. Blake,--my daughter there, and me, and God
alone has counted how many other wretched women. Her they struck a
double blow--they killed the two men she loved. One was her father, but
she flew to the other