sweet from the trees, sweet with earth odors, sweet with all the
lingering history of the day. Nearer, ever nearer would swing the
stars into her view. The moon, late a bow of thinnest, mistiest
silver, now of broadening, brightening gold, would begin to drive
the darkness downward from the white domes of the trees till it lay
as a faint shadow beneath them. These were hours fraught with peace
and rest to her tired mind and tired body.

One day she was sitting thus, absently knitting herself some
bleaching gloves, (Gabriella's hands were as if stained by all the
mixed petals of the boughs.) The sun was going down beyond the low
hills, In the orchard behind her she could hear the flutter of
wings and the last calls of quieting birds.

She had dropped the threads of her handiwork into her lap, and with
folded hands was knitting memories.

At twilights such as this in years gone by, she, a little girl, had
been used to drive out into the country with her grandmother--
often choosing the routes herself and ordering the carriage to be
stopped on the road as her fancy pleased. For in those aristocratic
days, Southern children, like those of royal families, were
encouraged early in life to learn how to give orders and to exact
obedience and to rule: when they grew up they would have many under
them: and not to reign was to be ruined. So that the infantile
autocrat Gabriella was being instructed in this way and in that way
by the powerful, strong-minded, efficient grandmother as a tender
old lioness might train a cub for the mastering of its dangerous
world. She recalled these twilight drives when the fields along the
turnpikes were turning green with the young grain; the homeward