e else concerning
her or her manner of life, save an almost positive assurance that she
had not left Richmond either at the beginning of the war nor since. She
had been seen in the streets, rarely speaking to any one, and at the
markets making a few scanty purchases and preserving the same silence,
ascribed, it was said, to the probable belief on her part that she would
be persecuted because of her known Northern sympathies. Had any one been
seen with her? No; she lived all alone in the little house.

Such were the limits of the knowledge achieved by Prescott, and for lack
of another course he chose the direct way and knocked at the door of the
little house, being compelled to repeat his summons twice before it was
answered. Then the door was opened slightly; but with a soldier's
boldness he pushed in and confronted a thin, elderly woman, who did not
invite him to be seated.

Prescott took in the room and its occupant with a single glance, and the
two seemed to him to be of a piece. The former--and he knew
instinctively that it was Miss Grayson--was meager of visage and figure,
with high cheek bones, thin curls flat down on her temples, and a black
dress worn and old. The room exhibited the same age and scantiness, the
same aspect of cold poverty, with its patched carpet and the slender
fire smouldering on the hearth.

She stood before him, confronting him with a manner in which boldness
and timidity seemed to be struggling with about equal success. There was
a flush of anger on her cheeks, but her lips were trembling.

"I am speaking to Miss Grayson?" said Prescott.

"You are, sir," she replied, "but I do not know you, and I do not know
why you have pushed yourself into my house."

"My name is Prescott, Robert Prescott, and I am a captain in the
Confederate Army, as you may see by my uniform."

He noticed that the trembling of her lip increased and she looked
fearfully at him; but the red flush of anger on her cheek deepened, too.
The chief impression that she made on Prescott was pathetic, standing
there in her poverty of dress and room, and he hastened to add:

"But I am here on my own private business; I have not come to annoy you.
I merely want to inquire of a woman, a lodger of yours."

"I have no lodgers," she replied; "I am alone."

"I don't think I can be mistaken," said Prescott; "she told me that she
was staying in this house."

"And may I ask the name of this lady who knows more about my own hous