long, excessive hair, that in the mornings she tied up with haste so
imperfectly, that once Reybold had seen it drop like a cloud around
her and nearly touch her feet. At that moment, seeing him, she
blushed. He plead, for once, a Congressman's impudence, and without
her objection, wound that great crown of woman's glory around her
head, and, as he did so, the perfection of her form and skin, and the
overrunning health and height of the Virginia girl, struck him so
thoroughly that he said:

"Miss Joyce, I don't wonder that Virginia is the mother of
Presidents."

Between Reybold and Joyce there were already the delicate relations of
a girl who did not know that she was a woman, and a man who knew she
was beautiful and worthy. He was a man vigilant over himself, and the
poverty and menial estate of Joyce Basil were already insuperable
obstacles to marrying her, but still he was attracted by her
insensibility that he could ever have regarded her in that light of
marriage. "Who was her father, the Judge?" he used to reflect. The
Judge was a favorite topic with Mrs. Basil at the table.

"Mr. Reybold," she would say, "you commercial people of the Nawth
can't hunt, I believe. Jedge Basil is now on the mountains of Fawquear
hunting the plova. His grandfather's estate is full of plova."

If, by chance, Reybold saw a look of care on Mrs. Basil's face, he
inquired for the Judge, her husband, and found he was still shooting
on the Occequan.

"Does he never come to Washington, Mrs. Basil?" asked Reybold one day,