A young girl, her silken apron raised to catch the clusters which a gentleman, mounted upon a chair, threw down, gave a little scream and let fall her purple hoard. “’Gad!” cried the gentleman.  One and another exclaimed, and a withered beauty seated beneath the mulberry-tree laughed shrilly.

A moment, an effort, a sharp recall of wandering thoughts, and Haward had the situation in hand.  An easy greeting to the gentlemen, debonair compliments for the ladies, a question or two as to the entertainment they had left, then a negligent bringing forward of Audrey.  “A little brown ward and ancient playmate of mine,—­shot up in the night to be as tall as a woman.  Make thy curtsy, child, and go tell the minister what I have said on the subject he wots of.”

Audrey curtsied and went away, having never raised her eyes to note the stare of curiosity, the suppressed smile, the glance from eye to eye, which had trod upon her introduction to the company.  Haward, remaining with his friends and acquaintances, gathered grapes for the blooming girl and the withered beauty, and for a little, smiling woman who was known for as arrant a scandalmonger as could be found in Virginia.

CHAPTER XVIII

A QUESTION OF COLORS

Evelyn, seated at her toilette table, and in the hands of Mr. Timothy Green, hairdresser in ordinary to Williamsburgh, looked with unseeing eyes at her own fair reflection in the glass before her.  Chloe, the black handmaiden who stood at the door, latch in hand, had time to grow tired of waiting before her mistress spoke.  “You may tell Mr. Haward that I am at home, Chloe.  Bring him here.”

The hairdresser drew a comb through the rippling brown tresses and commenced his most elaborate arrangement, working with pursed lips, and head bent now to this side, now to that.  He had been a hard-pressed man since sunrise, and the lighting of the Palace candles that night might find him yet employed by some belated dame.  Evelyn was very pale, and shadows were beneath her eyes.  Moved by a sudden impulse, she took from the table a rouge pot, and hastily and with trembling fingers rubbed bloom into her cheeks; then the patch box,—­one, two, three Tory partisans.  “Now I am less like a ghost,” she said, “Mr. Green, do I not look well and merry, and as though my sleep had been sound and dreamless?”

In his high, cracked voice, the hairdresser was sure that, pale or glowing, grave or gay, Mistress Evelyn Byrd would be the toast at the ball that night.  The lady laughed, for she heard Haward’s step upon the landing.  He entered to the gay, tinkling sound, tent over the hand she extended, then, laying aside hat and cane, took his seat beside the table.

    “’Fair tresses man’s imperial race insnare,
      And beauty draws us with a single hair,’”

he quoted, with a smile.  Then:  “Will you take our hearts in blue to-night, Evelyn?  You know that I love you best in blue.”