Harry and Dalton, before passing through the side gateway that led to the house, paused awhile to look at those who came.  Many people, and they ranked among the best in Richmond, walked.  They had sent all their horses to the front long ago to be ridden by cavalrymen or to draw cannon.  Others, not so self-sacrificing, came in heavy carriages with negroes driving.

Harry noticed that in many cases the clothing of the men showed a little white at the seams, and there were cuffs the ends of which had been trimmed with great care.  But it was these whom he respected most.  He remembered that Virginia had not really wanted to go into the war, and that she had delayed long, but, being in it, she was making supreme sacrifices.

And there were many young girls who did not need elaborate dress.  In their simple white or pink, often but cotton, their cheeks showing the delicate color that is possessed only by the girls in the border states of the South, they seemed very beautiful to Harry and George, who had known nothing but camps and armies so long.

It was the healthy admiration of the brave youth of one sex for the fair youth of the other, but there was in it a deeper note, too.  Age can stand misfortune.  Youth wonders why it is stricken, and Harry felt as they passed by, bright of face and soft of voice, that the clouds were gathering heavily over them.

But he was too young himself for the feeling to endure long.  Dalton was proposing that they go in and they promptly joined the stream of entering guests.  Randolph soon found them and presented them to Mrs. Curtis, a large woman of middle years, and dignified manner, related to nearly all the old families of Virginia, and a descendant of a collateral branch of the Washingtons.  Her husband, William Curtis, seemed to be of a different type, a man of sixty, tall, thin and more reserved than most Southerners of his time.  His thin lips were usually compressed and his pale blue eyes were lacking in warmth.  But the long strong line of his jaw showed that he was a man of strength and decision.

“A Northern bough on a Southern tree,” whispered Dalton, as they passed on.  “He comes from some place up the valley and they say that the North itself has not his superior in financial skill.”

“I did not warm to him at first,” said Harry, “but I respect him.  As you know, George, we’ve put too little stress upon his kind of ability.  We’ll need him and more like him when the Confederacy is established.  We’ll have to build ourselves up as a great power, and that’s done by trade and manufactures more than by arms.”

“It’s so, Harry.  But listen to that music!”

A band of four pieces placed behind flowers and shrubbery was playing.  Here was no blare of trumpets or call of bugles.  It was the music of the dance and the sentimental old songs of the South, nearly all of which had a sad and wailing note.  Harry heard the four black men play the songs that he had heard Samuel Jarvis sing, deep in the Kentucky mountains, and his heart beat with an emotion that he could not understand.  Was it a cry for peace?  Did his soul tell him that an end should come to fighting?  Then throbbed the music of the lines: