take no more, and, after their bows of farewell, Hortense sat alone again

pulling about the tea things.
I saw that by the table lay a card-case on the ground, evidently dropped

by Mrs. Gregory; but Hortense could not see it where she sat. Her quick
look along the path heralded more company and the General with more

chairs. Young people now began to appear, the various motions of whom
were more animated than the approaches and greetings and farewells of

their elders; chairs were moved and exchanged, the General was useful in
handling cups, and a number of faces unknown to me came and went, some of

them elderly ones whom I had seen in church, or passed while walking; the
black dresses of age mingled with the brighter colors of youth; and on

her bench behind the cups sat Hortense, or rose up at right moments,
radiant, restrained and adequate, receiving with deferential attention

the remarks of some dark-clothed elder, or, with sufficiently interested
countenance, inquiring something from a brighter one of her own

generation; but twice I saw her look up the garden path. None of them
stayed long, although when they were all gone the shadow of the garden

wall had come as far as the arbor; and once again Hortense sat alone
behind the table, leaning back with arms folded, and looking straight in

front of her. At last she stirred, and rose slowly, and then, with a
movement which was the perfection of timidity, began to advance, as John,

with his Aunt Eliza, came along the path. To John, Hortense with familiar
yet discreetbrightness gave a left hand, as she waited for the old lady;

and then the old lady went through with it. What that embrace of
acknowledgment cost her cannot be measured, and during its process John

stood like a sentinel. Possibly this was the price of his forgiveness to
his Aunt Eliza.

The visitors accepted tea, and the beauty in Hortense's face was now
supreme. The old lady sat, forgetting to drink her tea, but very still in

outward attitude, as she talked with Hortense; and the sight of one hand
in its glove lying motionless upon her best dress, suddenly almost drew

unexpected tears to my eyes. John was nearly as quiet as she, but the
glove that he held was twisted between his fingers. I expected that he

would stay with his Hortense when his aunt took her leave; he, however,
was evidently expected by the old lady to accompany her out and back, I

suppose, to her house, as was proper.
But John's departure from Hortense differed from his meeting her. She

gave no left hand to him now; she gazed at him, and then, as the old lady
began to go toward the house, she moved a step toward him, and then she

cast herself into his arms! It was no acting, this, no skilful simu-
lation; her head sank upon his shoulder, and true passion spoke in every

line of that beautiful surrendered form, as it leaned against her
lover's.

"So that's why!" I exclaimed, once more aloud.
It was but a moment; and John, released, followed Miss Eliza. The old

lady walked slowly, with that half-failing step that betokens the body's
weariness after great mental or moral strain. Indeed, as John regained

her side, she put her arm in his as if her feebleness needed his support.
Thus they went away together, the aunt and her beloved boy, who had so

sorely grieved and disappointed her.
But if this sight touched me, this glimpse of the vanquished leaving the

field after supremeacknowledgment of defeat, upon Hortense it wrought
another effect altogether. She stood looking after them, and as she

looked, the whole woman from head to foot, motionless as she was, seemed
to harden. Yet still she looked, until at length, slowly turning, her

eyes chanced to fall upon Mrs. Gregory St. Michael's card-case. There it
lay, the symbol of Kings Port's capitulation. She swooped down and up

with a flying curve of grace, holding her prey caught; and then, catching
also her handsome skirts on either side, she danced like a whirling fan

among the empty chairs.
XVIII: Again the Replacers

But a little while, and all that I had just witnessed in such vivid
dumb-show might have seemed to me in truth some masque; so smooth had it

been, and voiceless, coming and going like a devised fancy. And after the
last of the players was gone from the stage, leaving the white cloth, and

the silver, and the cups, and the groups of chairs near the pleasant
arbor, I watched the deserted garden whence the sunlight was slowly

departing, and it seemed to me more than ever like some empty and
charming scene in a playhouse, to which the comedians would in due time

return to repeat their delicate pantomime. But these were mental
indulgences, with which I sat playing until the sight of my interrupted

letter to Aunt Carola on the table before me brought the reality of
everything back into my thoughts; and I shook my head over Miss Eliza. I

remembered that hand of hers, lying in despondent acquiescence upon her
lap, as the old lady sat in her best dress, formally and faithfully

accepting the woman whom her nephew John had brought upon them as his
bride-elect--formally and faithfully accepting this distasteful person,

and thus atoning as best she could to her belovednephew for the wrong
that her affection had led her to do him in that ill-starred and

inexcusable tampering with his affairs.
But there was my letter waiting. I took my pen, and finished what I had

to say about the negro and the injustice we had done to him, as well as
to our own race, by the Fifteenth Amendment. I wrote:--

"I think Northerners must often seem to these people strangely obtuse in
their attitude. And they deserve such opinion, since all they need to do

is come here and see for themselves what the War did to the South.
"You may have a perfectly just fight with a man and beat him rightly; but

if you are able to go on with your work next day, while his health is so
damaged that for a long while he limps about as a cripple, you must not

look up from your busy thriving and reproach him with his helplessness,
and remind him of its cause; nor must you be surprised that he remembers

the fight longer than you have time for. I know that the North meant to
be magnanimous, that the North was magnanimous, that the spirit of Grant

at Appomattox filled many breasts; and I know that the magnanimity was
not met by those who led the South after Lee's retirement, and before

reconstruction set in, and that the Fifteenth Amendment was brought on by
their own doings: when have two wrongs made a right? And to place the

negro above these people was an atrocity. You cannot expect them to
inquire very industriously how magnanimous this North meant to be, when

they have suffered at her hands worse, far worse, than France suffered
from Germany's after 1870.

"I do think there should be a different spirit among some of the
later-born, but I have come to understand even the slights and suspicions

from which I here and there suffer, since to their minds, shut in by
circumstance, I'm always a 'Yankee.'

"We are prosperous; and prosperity does not bind, it merely assembles
people--at dinners and dances. It is adversity that binds--beside the

gravestone, beneath the desolated roof. Could you come here and see what
I have seen, the retrospect of suffering, the long, lingering con-

valescence, the small outlook of vigor to come, and the steadfast
sodality of affliction and affection and fortitude, your kind but

unenlightened heart would be wrung, as mine has been, and is being, at
every turn."

After I had posted this reply to Aunt Carola, I had some fears that my
pen had run away with me, and that she might now descend upon me with

that reproof which she knew so well how to exercise in cases of
disrespect. But there was actually a certain pathos in her mildness when

it came. She felt it her duty to go over a good deal of history first,
but:--

"I do not understand the present generation," she finished, "and I
suppose that I was not meant to."

The little sigh in these words did great credit to Aunt Carola.
This vindication off my mind, and relieved by it of the more general

thoughts about Kings Port and the South, which the pantomime of Kings
Port's forced capitulation to Hortense had raised in me, I returned to

the personal matters between that young woman and John, and Charley. How
much did Charley know? How much would Charley stand? How much would John

stand, if he came to know?
Well, the scene in the garden now helped me to answer these questions