“I told Dolly not to let them stuff,” answered Gabriella, as she sat down by the window and threaded her needle.  She was a tall, dark girl, slender and straight as a young poplar, with a face that was frank and pleasant rather than pretty, and sparkling brown eyes which turned golden and grew bright as swords when she was angry.  Seen by the strong light of the window, her face showed sallow in tone, with a certain nobility about the bony structure beneath the soft girlish flesh, and a look of almost stern decision in the square chin and in the full rich curve of the mouth.  Her hair, which was too fine and soft to show its thickness, drooped from its parting at the side in a dark wing over her forehead, where it shadowed her arched black eyebrows and the clear sweet gravity of her eyes.  As she bent over her sewing the thin pure lines of her body had a look of arrested energy, of relaxed but exuberant vitality.

“You won’t go to the dance to-night, will you, Gabriella?” inquired Mrs. Carr nervously.

“No, I’m not going,” answered the girl regretfully, for she loved dancing, and her white organdie dress, trimmed with quillings of blue ribbon, lay upstairs on the bed.  “I’ll never dance again if only Jane won’t go back to Charley.  I’ll work my fingers to the bone to help her take care of the children.”

“I’ll never, never go back,” chanted Jane with feverish passion.

“But I thought Arthur Peyton was coming for you,” said Mrs. Carr.  “He will be so disappointed.”

“Oh, he’ll understand—­he’ll have to,” replied Gabriella carelessly.

The sunshine faded slowly from the hyacinths on the window-sill, and drawing her crocheted cape of purple wool closer about her, Mrs. Carr moved a little nearer the fireplace.  Outside the March wind was blowing with a melancholy sound up the long straight street, and rocking the glossy boughs of an old magnolia tree in the yard From the shining leaves of the tree a few drops of water fell on the brick pavement, where several joyous sparrows were drinking, and farther off, as bright as silver in the clear wind, a solitary church spire rose above the huddled roofs of the town.  When the wind lulled, as it did now and then, a warm breath seemed to stir in the sunshine, which grew suddenly brighter, while a promise of spring floated like a faint provocative scent on the air.  And this scent, so vague, so roving, that it was like the ghostly perfume of flowers, stole at last into the memory, and made the old dream of youth and the young grow restless at the call of Life, which sang to the music of flutes in the brain.  But the wind, rising afresh, drove the spirit of spring from the street, and swept the broken leaves of the magnolia tree over the drenched grass to the green-painted iron urns on either side of the steps.