There was to be the funeral of a friend of Judge Roscoe's in the neighborhood, and at the table he had been arranging how "the family should be represented," to use his formal phrase, for business necessitated his absence.
"But I will walk over with you, Leonora, although I cannot stay for the services. I will call by for you later."
It was natural, both in the interests of civility and his own pleasure, that Baynell should offer to take the old gentleman's place, urging that an officer was the most efficient escort in the unsettled state of the country; and, indeed, how could they refuse? He, however, thought only of her acceptability to him. Apart from her beauty he had never known a woman who so conformed to his ideals of the appropriate, despite the grotesque folly of her blighted romance. It was only her nobility of nature, he argued, that had compassed her unhappiness in that instance. The graces of her magnanimity would not have been wasted on him, he protested inwardly. He appreciated that they were fine and high qualities thus cast before swine and ruthlessly trampled underfoot. She herself had lacked in naught—but the unworthy subject of the largess of her heart.
It was Baynell who talked as they took their way through the grove and down the hill. Now and again she lifted her eyes, murmured assent, seemed to listen, always subacutely following the trend of her own reflections.
He would not intrude into the house of affliction, being a stranger, he said, and therefore he strolled about outside during the melancholy obsequies, patiently waiting till she came out again and joined him. She seemed cast down, agitated; he thought her of a delicately sensitive organization.
"How familiar death is becoming in these war times!" she said drearily, when they were out of the crowd once more and fairly homeward bound. "There was not one woman of the hundred in that house who is not wearing mourning."
She rarely introduced a topic, and, with more alacrity than the subject might warrant, he spoke in responsive vein on the increased losses in battle as arms are improved, presently drifting to the comparison of statistics of the mortality in hospitals, the relative chances for life under shell or musketry fire, the destructive efficacy of sabre cuts, and the military value of cavalry charges. The cavalry fought much now on foot, he said, using the carbine, but this reduced the efficiency of the force one-fourth, the necessary discount for horse-holders; he thought there was great value in the cavalry charge, with the unsheathed sabre; it was like the rush of a cyclone; only few troops, well disciplined, could hold their ground before it; thus he pursued the subject of cognate interest to his profession. And meantime she was thinking only of these women, mourning their dead and dear, while she—the hypocrite—wore the garb of the bereaved to emphasize her merciful and gracious release. She wondered how she had ever endured it, she who hated deceit, a fanciful pose, and the empty conventions, she who did not mourn save for her lost exaltations, her wasted affection, the hopeless aspirations—all the dear, sweet illusions of life! Perhaps she had owed some compliance with the customs of mere widowhood, the outward respect to the status. Well, then, she had paid it; farther than this she would not go.
The next morning as Captain Baynell took his seat at the breakfast-table she was coming in through the glass door from the parterre at one side of the dining room, arrayed in a mazarine blue mousseline-de-laine flecked with pink, a trifle old-fashioned in make, with a bunch of pink hyacinths in her hand, their delicate cold fragrance filling all the room.
Even a man less desirous of being deceived than Baynell might well have deduced a personal application. He was sufficiently conversant with the conventions of feminine attire to be aware that this change was something of the most sudden. His finical delicacy was pained to a certain extent that the casting off her widow's weeds could be interpreted as a challenge to a fresh romance. But he argued that if this were for his encouragement, surely he should not cavil at her candor, for it would require a bolder man than he to offer his heart and hand under the shadow of that swaying crape veil. Nevertheless when his added confidence showed in his elated eyes, his assured manner, she stared at him for a moment with a surprise so obvious that it chilled the hope ardently aglow in his consciousness. The next instant realizing that all the eyes at the table were fixed on her blooming attire, noting the change, she flushed in confusion and vexation. She had not counted on being an object of attention and speculation.
Judge Roscoe's ready tact mitigated the stress of the situation. "Leonora," he said, "you look like the spring! That combination of sky-blue and peach-blow was always a favorite with your aunt,—French taste, she called it. It seems to me that the dyes of dress goods were more delicate then than now; that is not something new, is it?"