Alone, Jacqueline stood for a minute beside the sleeping child, then bent and kissed Deb’s brown neck.  Moving to a window, she sat down before it, resting her arm upon the sill and her head upon her arm.  Outside the window grew a giant fir tree, shading the room, and giving it at times an aspect too cold and northern.  But Jacqueline loved the tree, and loved and fed the birds that in winter perched upon the dark boughs.  Now, between the needles, the eastern sky looked blue and cold.  Jacqueline, sitting idle, felt her eyes fill with slow tears.  They did not fall.  She was not lacking in self-control, and she told herself that of late she had wept too often.  She sat very still, her head bowed upon her listless arm, while the moments passed, bearing with them pictures seen through unshed tears.  She was living over the days of the Three-Notched Road, and she beheld each shifting scene by the light of a passion that she believed to be unreasonable, unnatural, secret, and without hope.  Her uncle’s voice came to her from the hall below.  “Jacqueline, Jacqueline!” She arose, bathed her eyes, and went downstairs.

It was the custom of the family to gather after supper upon the great white pillared porch, and to sit through the twilight.  The men smoked slowly and reflectively, the women sat with folded hands, watching the last glow upon the hills, and the brightening of the evening star; dreamily listening to the choir of frogs, the faint tinkle of cowbells, the bleating of folded lambs, and the continual rustle of the poplar leaves.

Jacqueline took her seat beside Unity.  Colonel Churchill, in his especial chair, was smoking like a benevolent volcano; at a small table Major Edward was playing Patience.  On the broad porch steps below Jacqueline and Unity half sat, half lay, the two Carys.  The fireflies were beginning to show, and out of the distance came a plaintive Whip-poor-will—­Whip-poor-will!

“I shall have,” said Ludwell Cary, “the vines at Greenwood trained like these.  There could be no better way.”

“Is the drawing-room finished?” asked Unity.

“Almost finished.  The paper came to-day from Baltimore.  The ground is silver, and there are garlands of roses and a host of piping shepherds.”

“Oh, lovely!” cried Unity.  “But no shepherdesses?”

“Yes, in among the roses.  It is quite Arcadian.  When will the princesses come to see the shepherdesses?”

He looked at them both.  “The Princess and her waiting-maid,” said Unity demurely, “will come very soon.”  She rose from the green bench.  “The waiting-maid is going now to her harpsichord!” Her eyes rested upon the younger Cary.  “Will you be so very good as to turn the leaves for me?”

Fairfax Cary embracing with alacrity the chance of goodness, the two went into the house.  The dusk deepened; the odour of honeysuckle and syringa grew heavier, and white moths sailed by on their way to the lighted windows.