“I reckon she’s set for good and all,” she remarked emphatically, and went on her way.

“Mother, it’s time to stop sewing and think about supper,” called Gabriella gaily, as she ran into the room and bent to kiss her mother, who turned a flat, soft cheek in her direction, and remarked gloomily:  “Gabriella, you’ve had a visitor.”

Not for worlds would Mrs. Carr have surrendered to the disarming cheerfulness of her daughter’s manner; for since Gabriella had gone to work in a shop, her mother’s countenance implied that she was piously resigned to disgrace as well as to poverty.  It was inconceivable to her that any girl with Berkeley blood in her veins could be so utterly devoid of proper pride as Gabriella had proved herself to be; and the shock of this discovery had left a hurt look in her face.  There were days when she hardly spoke to the girl, when refusing food, she opened her lips only to moisten her thread, when the slow tears seemed forever welling between her reddened eyelids.  As they had just passed through one of these painful periods, Gabriella was surprised to find that, for the moment at least, her mother appeared to have forgotten her righteous resentment.  Though it could hardly be said that Mrs. Carr spoke cheerfully—­since cheerfulness was foreign to her nature—­at least she had spoken.  Of her own accord, unquestioned and unurged, she had volunteered a remark to her daughter; and Gabriella felt that, for a brief respite, the universe had ceased to be menacing.

“Gabriella, you have had a visitor,” repeated Mrs. Carr, and it was clear that her sorrow (she never yielded to passion) had been overcome by a natural human eagerness to tell her news.

“Not Cousin Jimmy?” asked the girl lightly.

“No, you could never guess, if you guessed all night.”

“Not Charley Gracey surely?  I wouldn’t speak to him for the world.”

Though Jane had returned to Charley, and even Mrs. Carr, feeling in her heart that her younger daughter had dealt her the hardest blow, had been heard to say that she “pitied her son-in-law more than she censured him,” Gabriella had not softened in her implacable judgment.

“Of course it wasn’t Charley.  I shouldn’t have mentioned it if it had been, because you are so bitter against him.  But it was somebody you haven’t seen for months.  Do you remember Evelyn Randolph’s son who paid you so much attention last winter?”

“George Fowler!  Has he been here?” asked Gabriella, and her voice quivered like a harp.

“I told Marthy to say you were out.  Of course I wasn’t fit to see company, but he caught sight of me on his way to the gate and came back on the porch to speak to me.  He remembered all about my having gone to school with his mother, and it seems she had told him about the time she was Queen of May and I maid of honour.  I asked him how Evelyn stood living in New York, but he said she likes it better than his father does.  Archie Fowler insists that he is coming back to Virginia to end his days.  They seem to have plenty of money.  I expect Archie has made a fortune up there or he wouldn’t be satisfied to live out of Virginia.”