memory the deeper, for he suddenly raised his head and burst out:--
"Ah, Major, you ought to have seen that woman forty years ago! Why,
suh, she was just a rose herself!"

And then followed in disconnected scraps, as if he were recalling it
to himself, with long pauses between, that story which I had heard
hinted at before. A story never told the children, and never even
whispered in aunt Nancy's presence,--the one love affair of her life.

She and Robert had grown up together,--he a tall, brown-eyed young
fellow just out of the university, and she a fair-haired, joyous girl
with half the county at her feet. Nancy had not loved him at first,
nor ever did until the day he had saved her life in that wild dash
across country when her horse took fright, and he, riding neck and
neck, had lifted her clear of her saddle. After that there had been
but one pair of eyes and arms for her in the wide world. All of that
spring and summer, as the colonel put it, she was like a bird pouring
out her soul in one continuous song. Then there had come a night in
Richmond,--the night of the ball,--followed by her sudden return home,
hollow-eyed and white, and the mysterious postponement of the wedding
for a year.

Everybody wondered, but no one knew, and only as the months went by
did her spirits gain a little, and she begin to sing once more.

It was at a great party on a neighboring estate, amid the swim of the
music and the whirl of soft lace. Suddenly loud voices and threats,
a shower of cards flung at a man's face, an uplifted arm caught by the
host. Then a hall door thrust open and a half-frenzied man with
disordered dress staggering out. Then the startled face of a young