On a still, beautiful May morning, Warner was laid to rest in the Lanarth graveyard beside poor Temple Mason.  It was the boy’s own request, and his mother felt constrained to comply with it, although she would have preferred interring the remains of her child beside those of her own people at Greenwood.  The story of the young life beating itself out against prison bars, had taken strong hold of the lad’s imagination, and the fancy grew that he too would sleep more sweetly under the shadow of the old cedars in the land the young soldier had loved so well.

Norma and Pocahontas stood near each other beside the new-made grave, and as they quitted the inclosure, their hands met for an instant coldly.  Pocahontas tried not to harbor resentment, but she could not forget whose hand it had been that had struck her the first bitter blow.

After Warner’s death, Mrs. Smith appeared to collapse, mentally as well as bodily.  She remained day after day shut in his chamber, brooding silently and rejecting with dumb apathy all sympathy and consolation.  Her strength and appetite declined, and her interest in life deserted her, leaving a hopeless quiescence that was inexpressibly pitiful.  Her husband, in alarm for her life and reason, hurriedly decided to break up the establishment at Shirley, and remove her for a time from surroundings that constantly reminded her of her loss.

In the beginning of June, the move was made, the house closed, the servants dismissed, and the care of the estate turned over to Berkeley.  With the dawning of summer, the birds of passage winged their flight northward.

CHAPTER XIX.

There comes a time in human affairs, whether of nations or individuals, when a dull exhausted calm appears to fall upon them—­a period of repose, a lull after the excitement of hurried events, a pause in which to draw breath for the renewal of the story.  Grateful are these interludes, and necessary for the preservation of true equipoise, but they are not interesting, and in novels all description of them is carelessly skipped over.  In stories we want events, not lingerings.

The summer passed quietly for the family at Lanarth, broken only by the usual social happenings, visits from the “Byrd girls,” as they were still called, with their husbands and little ones; a marriage, a christening, letters from Jim and Susie, and measles among the little Garnetts.  In August, Pocahontas and her mother went for a month to Piedmont, Virginia, to try the medicinal waters for the latter’s rheumatism, and after their return home, Berkeley took a holiday and ran up to the Adirondacks to see Blanche.

Poor Mrs. Smith did not rally as her family had hoped, and the physicians—­as is customary when a case baffles their skill—­all recommended further and more complete change.  They must take her abroad, and try what the excitement of foreign travel would do toward preventing her from sinking into confirmed invalidism.  General Smith, who had abandoned every care and interest for the purpose of devoting himself to his wife, embraced the proposal with eagerness, and insisted on the experiment being tried as speedily as possible.