“Sally, dear,” I said, “you’re not envying Anne, are you?”

A quick blush rushed to her face.  “Cousin Mary!  What foolishness I’ve been talking!  How could I!  What must you think of me!  I didn’t mean it—­please believe I didn’t.  I’m the luckiest girl on earth, and I’m having the most perfect time, and you are a fairy godmother to me, except that you’re more like a younger sister.  I was thinking aloud.  Anne is such a brilliant being compared to me, that the thought of her discourages me sometimes.  It was just Cinderella admiring the princess, you know.”

“Cinderella got the prince,” I said, smiling.

“I don’t want the prince,” said Sally, “even if I could get him.  I wouldn’t marry an Englishman.  I don’t care about a title.  To be a Virginian is enough title for me.  It was just his name, magnificent Sir Richard Grenville’s name and the Revenge-Armada atmosphere that took my fancy.  I don’t know if Anne would care for that part,” she added, doubtfully.

“I’m sure Anne would know nothing about it,” I answered decidedly, and Sally went on cheerfully.

“She’s very welcome to the modern Sir Richard, yacht and title and all.  I don’t believe he’s as attractive as your sailor, Cousin Mary.  Something the same style, I should say from the description.  If you hadn’t owned him from the start, I’d rather like that man to be my sailor, Cousin Mary—­he’s so everything that a gentleman is supposed to be.  How did he learn that manner—­why, it would flatter you if he let the boom whack you on the head.  Too bad he’s only a common sailor—­such a prince gone wrong!”

I looked at her talking along softly, leaning back on one hand and gazing at the fire, a small white Turkish slipper—­Southern girls always have little feet—­stuck out to the blaze, and something in the leisurely attitude and low, unhurried voice, something, too, in the reminiscent crackle of the burning wood, invited me to confidence.  I went to my dressing-table, and when I came back, dropped, as if I were another girl, on the rug beside her.  “I want to show you this,” I said, and opened a case that travels always with me.  From the narrow gold rim of frame inside, my lover smiled gayly up at her brown hair and my gray, bending over it together.

None of the triumphs of modern photographers seem to my eyes so delicately charming as the daguerrotypes of the sixties.  As we tipped the old picture this way and that, to catch the right light on the image under the glass, the very uncertainty of effect seemed to give it an elusive fascination.  To my mind the birds in the bush have always brighter plumage than any in the hand, and one of these early photographs leaves ever, no matter from what angle you look upon it, much to the imagination.  So Geoff in his gray Southern uniform, young and soldierly, laughed up at Sally and me from the shadowy lines beneath the glass, more like a vision of youth than like actual flesh and blood that had once been close and real.