“Once Frederic’s wife—­always his!” was the sole burden of her answer to a proposal of marriage received when she was forty-five, and the discomfited suitor filed it in his memory alongside of Caesar’s hackneyed war dispatch.

She had laid off crape and bombazine at the close of the first lustrum of her widowhood as inconvenient and unwholesome wear, but never assumed colored apparel.  On the morning on which our story opens, she took her seat at the breakfast-table in her nephew’s house—­of which she was matron and supervisor-in-chief—­clad in a white cambric wrapper, belted with black; her collar fastened with a mourning-pin of Frederic’s hair, and a lace cap, trimmed with black ribbon, set above her luxuriant tresses.  She looked fresh and bright as the early September day, with her sunny face and in her daintily-neat attire, as she arranged cups and saucers for seven people upon the waiter before her, instructing the butler, at the same time, to ring the bell again for those she was to serve.  She was very busy and happy at that date.  The neighborhood was gay, after the open-hearted, open-handed style of hospitality that distinguished the brave old days of Virginia plantation-life.  A merry troup of maidens and cavaliers visited by invitation one homestead after another, crowding bedrooms beyond the capacity of any chambers of equal size to be found in the land, excepting in a country house in the Old Dominion; surrounding bountiful tables with smiling visages and restless tongues; dancing, walking, driving, and singing away the long, warm days, that seemed all too short to the soberest and plainest of the company; which sped by like dream-hours to most of the number.

Winston Aylett, owner and tenant of the ancient mansion of Ridgeley—­the great house of a neighborhood where small houses and men of narrow means were infrequent—­had gone North about the first of June, upon a tour of indefinite length, but which was certainly to include Newport, the lakes, and Niagara, and was still absent.  His aunt, Mrs. Sutton, and his only sister, Mabel, did the honors of his home in his stead, and, if the truth must be admittbd, more acceptably to their guests than he had ever succeeded in doing.  For a week past, the house had been tolerably well filled—­ditto Mrs. Sutton’s hands; ditto her great, heart.  Had she not three love affairs, in different but encouraging stages of progression, under her roof and her patronage!  And were not all three, to her apprehension, matches worthy of Heaven’s making, and her co-operation?  A devout Episcopalian, she was yet an unquestioning believer in predestination and “special Providences”—­and what but Providence had brought together the dear creatures now basking in the benignant beam of her smile, sailing smoothly toward the haven of Wedlock before the prospering breezes of Circumstance (of her manufacture)?

While putting sugar and cream into the cups intended for the happy pairs, she reviewed the situation rapidly in her mind, and sketched the day’s manoeuvres.