BOOK II

A RAINY SEASON




I


Mrs. Jane Dudley Webb was a lady who supported an impossible present
upon an important past. She had once been heard to remark that if she
had not something to look back upon she could not live: and, as her
retrospective view was racial rather than individual, the consolation
attained might be considered disproportionate to the needs of the case.
The lines of her present had fallen in a white frame house in the main
street of Kingsborough; those of her past began with the first Dudley
who swung a lance in Merry England, to end with irascible old William of
the name, who slept in the family graveyard upon James River.

Mrs. Webb herself was straight and elegant, and inclined to the
ironical, when, as Jane Dudley, the belle of the country-side, she fired
the fancy of young Julius Webb, an officer in the cavalry of the United
States. He danced a minuet with her at a ball in Washington, was heard
to swear an oath by her eyes at punch before the supper was over; and
proceeded the following week to spur his courtship upon old William as