“Mother, this is Mr. Raymond,” he said.  “He’s the best friend I have on the Dixie, and you’re to be awfully good to him!”

Mrs. Quintan graciously gave him her hand and said something about his kindness to her boy.  Raymond was too stricken to speak and was thankful for the semi-darkness that hid his face.  Mrs. Quintan continued softly, in the same sweet and overpowering manner, to purr her gratitude and try to put him at his ease.  Raymond would have been a happy man could he have sunk though the parquetry floor.  He trembled as he was led into the drawing-room, where another gracious and overpowering creature rose to receive them.

“My aunt, Miss Christine Latimer,” said Howard.

She was younger than Mrs. Quintan; a tall, fair woman of middle age, with a fine figure, hair streaked with grey, and the remains of what had once been extreme beauty.  Her voice was the sweetest Raymond had ever listened to, and his shyness and agitation wore off as she began to speak to him.  He was left a long while alone with her, for Howard and his mother withdrew, excusing themselves on the score of private matters.  Christine Latimer was touched by the forlorn quartermaster, who, in his nervousness, gripped his chair with clenched hands and started when he was asked a question.  She soon got him past this stage of their acquaintance, and, leading him on by gentle gradations to talk about himself, even learned his whole story, and that in so unobtrusive a fashion that he was hardly aware of his having told it to her.

“I am speaking to you as though I had known you all my life,” he said in an artless compliment.  “I hope it is not very forward of me.  It is your fault for being so kind and good.”

He was ecstatic when he left the house with Quintan.

“I didn’t know there were such women in the world,” he said.  “So noble, so winning and high-bred.  It makes you understand history to meet people like that.  Mary Queen of Scots, Marie Antoinette and all those, you know—­they must have been like that.  I—­I could understand a man dying for Miss Latimer!”

“Oh, she’s all right, my aunt!” said Quintan.  “She was a tremendous beauty once, and even now she’s what I’d call a devilish handsome woman.  And the grand manner, it isn’t everybody that likes it, but I do.  It’s a little old-fashioned nowadays, but, by Jove, it still tells.”

“I wonder that such a splendid woman should have remained unmarried,” said Raymond.  He stuck an instant on the word unmarried.  It seemed almost common to apply to such a princess.

“She had an early love affair that turned out badly,” said Quintan.  “I don’t know what went wrong, but anyway it didn’t work.  Then, when my father died, she came to live with us and help bring us up—­you see there are two more of us in the family—­and I am told she refused some good matches just on account of us kids.  It makes me feel guilty sometimes to think of it.”