And every woman, too, waving cheerful farewell to valiant lines of marching gray or sturdy ranks of blue, had hoped the same for her side.

But in war there is always a reckoning to pay.  Always one contender driven to the wall, his cities turned to ashes, his lands laid waste.  Always one depleted side which takes one last desperate stand in the sight of blackened homes and outraged fields and fights on through ever darkening days until the inevitable end is come.

And the end of the Confederacy was now almost in sight.  Three years of fighting and the Seceding States had been cut in twain, their armies widely separated by the Union hosts.  Advancing and retreating but always fighting, month after month, year after year the men in gray had come at last to the bitterest period of it all—­when the weakened South was slowly breaking under the weight of her brother foes—­when the two greatest of the armies battled on Virginia soil—­battled and passed to their final muster roll.

Of little need to tell of the privations which the pivotal state of the Confederacy went through.  If it were true that Virginia had been simply one vast arsenal where every inhabitant had unfailingly done his part in making war, it was also true that she had furnished many of its greatest battlefields—­and at what a frightful cost.

Everywhere were the cruel signs of destruction and want—­in scanty larder, patched, refurbished clothing, servantless homes—­in dismantled outhouses, broken fences and neglected, brier-choked fields.  Even the staples of life were fast diminishing for every man who could shoulder a gun had gone to fight with Lee, and few animals were left and fewer slaves.

* * * * *

Yet, for all the dismal outlook, Winter had passed without actual disaster to the Confederate arms and now that Spring had come the plantation home of the Herbert Carys, twenty miles below Richmond, had never had a fairer setting.  White-pillared and stately the old Colonial mansion stood on one of the low, emerald hills which roll back lazily from the peaceful James.  It was true that the flower beds had been trampled down to ruin by alien horse and heel, but the scent of the honeysuckle clinging to those shining pillars only seemed the sweeter for the loss, and whatever else the forager might take, he could not rob them of their gracious vista of hills and shimmering river.

Across the broad driveway and up the steps of the veranda passed Mrs. Cary, fairer than had been the flowers, a true daughter of the oldtime South, gentle and quiet eyed, her light summer dress of the cheapest material, yet deftly fashioned by her own fingers from slightly opened neck, where an old brooch lay against her soft throat, down to the dainty spotless flounces lying above her petticoat of crinoline.

Though her lips and eyes refused to betray it even when there was no one to see, it was with a very heavy heart that she mounted the stairs to the attic, thinking, contriving, clutching desperately at her fading hopes.