From behind the massive coffee urn at the head of her table she regarded her boarders as so many beneficiaries upon her bounty.  When she passed a cup of coffee she seemed to confer an honour; when she returned a receipted bill it was as if she repulsed an insult.  People said that she had been born to greatness and that she had never adapted herself to the obscurity that had been thrust upon her—­but they said it when her back was turned.  To her face the subject was never broached, and her former prosperity was ignored along with her present poverty.  Of her own sorrows she, herself, made no mention.  When she spoke from the depths of her bitterness of the war and the ruin it had left, her resentment was general rather than personal.  Above the mantel in her room hung the sword of Julius Webb, sheathed under the tattered colours of the Confederate States.  At her throat she wore a button that had been cut from a gray coat, and, once, after the close of the war, she had pointed to it before a Federal officer, and had said:  “Sir, the women of the South have never surrendered!” The officer had looked at the face above the button as he answered:  “Madam, had the women of the South fought its battles, surrender would have been for the men of the North.”  But Jane Webb had smiled bitterly in silence.  To her the Federal officer was but an individual member of a national army of invasion, and the rights of the victors, the wrongs of Virginia.

Her neighbours regarded her with almost passionate pride—­rebuking their more generous natures by the sight of her unbowed beauty and her solitary revolt.  When young Dudley grew old enough to attend school the general and the judge called together upon his mother and offered, with hesitancy, to undertake his education.

“He is only a year or two older than my Tom,” began the judge, tripping in his usually steady speech.  “I assure you it will give me pleasure to have the boys thrown together.”

Mrs. Webb bowed in unaffirmative fashion.

“On my life, ma’am, I can’t forget that Julius Webb fell at Brandy Station,” put in the general hotly.  “Your husband died for Virginia, and your boy shall not want while I have a penny in my pocket.  I’ll send him to college with Bernard, and feel it to be a privilege!”

Mrs. Webb bowed again.

“A great privilege, ma’am,” protested the general, uneasily.

Mrs. Webb smiled.

“The greatest privilege of my life, ma’am!” cried the general, his face flushing and his eyes growing round with agitation.

In the end they gained their point, and Mrs. Webb consented, but with a reluctance of reserve which caused the general to choke with embarrassment and the judge to become speechless from perplexity.  When they rose to leave both thanked her with effusion and both bowed themselves out as gratefully as if it were a royal drawing-room and they had received the honours of knighthood.