any
people, mostly young, and the cheerful fire in the grate glowing redly
across the shades of the carpet.

There were a half-dozen men, some in uniform and some in civilian garb,
around Helen Harley, and she showed all a young girl's keen and natural
delight in admiration and in the easy flow of talk. Both Raymond and
Winthrop were in the circle, and so was Redfield, wearing a black frock
coat of unusual length and with rings on his fingers. Prescott wondered
why such a man should be a member of this group, but at that moment some
one dropped a hand upon his shoulder and, turning, he beheld the tall
figure of Colonel Harley, Helen's brother.

"I, too, have leave of absence, Prescott," he said, "and what better
could a man do than spend it in Richmond?"

Harley was a large, fair man, undeniably handsome, but with a slight
expression of weakness about the mouth. He had earned his military
reputation and he visibly enjoyed it.

"Where could one find a more brilliant scene than this?" continued the
Colonel. "Ah, my boy, our Southern women stand supreme for beauty and
wit!"

Prescott had been present before the war, both in his own country and in
others, at occasions far larger and far more splendid; but none
impressed him like the present, with the never-failing contrast of camp
and battlefield from which he had come. There was in it, too, a singular
pathos that appealed to his inmost heart. Some of the women wore dresses
that had belonged to their mothers in their youth, the attire of the men
was often strange and variegated, and nearly half the officers present
had empty sleeves or bandaged shoulders. But no one seemed to notice
these peculiarities by eye or speech, nor was their gaiety assumed; it
was with some the gradual contempt of hardship brought about by use and
with others the temporary rebound from long depression.

"Come," said Talbot to his friend, "you must meet the celebrities.
Here's George Bagby, our choicest humourist; Trav. Daniel, artist, poet
and musician; Jim Pegram, Innes Randolph, and a lot more."

Prescott was introduced in turn to Richmond's most noted men of wit and
manners, the cream of the old South, and gradually all drew together in
one great group. They talked of many things, of almost everything except
the war, of the news from Europe, of the books that they had
read--Scott and Dickens, Thackeray and Hugo--and of the music that they
had heard, particularly the favourite arias of It