“The shutters are up,” said Stephen.  “I understood that Mrs. Colfax had come out here not long a—­”

“She came out for a day just before Christina,” said Anne, smiling, “and then she ran off to Kentucky.  I think she was afraid that she was one of the two women on the list of Sixty.”

“It must have been a blow to her pride when she found that she was not,” said Stephen, who had a keen remembrance of her conduct upon a certain Sunday not a year gone.

Impelled by the same inclination, they walked in silence to the house and sat down on the edge of the porch.  The only motion in the view was the smoke from the slave quarters twisting in the wind, and the hurrying ice in the stream.

“Poor Jinny!” said Anne, with a sigh, “how she loved to romp!  What good times we used to have here together!”

“Do you think that she is unhappy?” Stephen demanded, involuntarily.

“Oh, yes,” said Anne.  “How can you ask?  But you could not make her show it.  The other morning when she came out to our house I found her sitting at the piano.  I am sure there were tears in her eyes, but she would not let me see them.  She made some joke about Spencer Catherwood running away.  What do you think the Judge will do with that piano, Stephen?”

He shook his head.

“The day after they put it in his room he came in with a great black cloth, which he spread over it.  You cannot even see the feet.”

There was a silence.  And Anne, turning to him timidly, gave him a long, searching look.

“It is growing late,” she said.  “I think that we ought to go back.”

They went out by the long entrance road, through the naked woods.  Stephen said little.  Only a little while before he had had one of those vivid dreams of Virginia which left their impression, but not their substance, to haunt him.  On those rare days following the dreams her spirit had its mastery over his.  He pictured her then with a glow on her face which was neither sadness nor mirth,—­a glow that ministered to him alone.  And yet, he did not dare to think that he might have won her, even if politics and war had not divided them.

When the merriment of the dance was at its height that evening, Stephen stood at the door of the long room, meditatively watching the bright gowns and the flash of gold on the uniforms as they flitted past.  Presently the opposite door opened, and he heard Mr. Brinsmade’s voice mingling with another, the excitable energy of which recalled some familiar episode.  Almost—­so it seemed—­at one motion, the owner of the voice had come out of the door and had seized Stephen’s hand in a warm grasp,—­a tall and spare figure in the dress of a senior officer.  The military frock, which fitted the man’s character rather than the man, was carelessly open, laying bare a gold-buttoned white waistcoat and an expanse of shirt bosom which ended in a black stock tie.  The ends of the collar were apart the width of the red clipped beard, and the mustache was cropped straight along the line of the upper lip.  The forehead rose high, and was brushed carelessly free of the hair.  The nose was almost straight, but combative.  A fire fairly burned in the eyes.