“My dear,” said General Brandon, in a peculiarly musical voice, to his daughter, “I think we had better wait here until Mrs. Luttrell’s carriage arrives. It is in line down the street, but will not be here for five minutes or more.”
Darrell and Pelham moved a little aside so that the young lady and her father might be somewhat out of the way of the passing throng. General Brandon recognized this civility by lifting his hat punctiliously to each, which courtesy both of them returned. At the same moment, Elizabeth lifting her hand to her white throat, her sleeve caught in a slender gold chain around her neck and a sudden movement broke it.
“Oh, papa!” she said, “save my little pearl heart. I would not lose it for the world.”
General Brandon immediately looked down on the wet sidewalk for the trinket, a search in which he was joined by both Pelham and Darrell. Clavering, who was in the shadow, did not move, but his eyes followed every movement of the group. Elizabeth unconsciously brushed against him. There was some mud on his boots, and it became transferred to her white muslin skirts, which she let fall in the anxiety of her loss. The trinket, it would seem, had fallen at their very feet, but it was not to be found. Elizabeth’s eyes filled with tears, and she mourned for her little pearl heart as if it had been a lost child.
“It is of no real value,” she said to Pelham, raising her soft, dark eyes to his, “but I would not have lost it for anything.”
Both Pelham and Darrell were keen-eyed and searched diligently for the lost trinket, but unavailingly. Pelham, usually the most unimpressed of men where women and their fallals were concerned, felt that he would have given a month’s pay to have found the little ornament and thereby dry the tears that glistened on Elizabeth’s long, black lashes; but it was soon obvious that there was no finding her lost treasure. Its disappearance, though mysterious, was instant and complete.
General Brandon said in his slow, suave voice: “My dear child, all our efforts are vain. I think your little treasure must have been stolen by an unseen hand at the instant you dropped it; but you, gentlemen,” he said, turning to Pelham and Darrell, “have been most kind, and I beg to introduce myself to you. I am General Brandon of Virginia, formerly of the United States Army and lately of the Confederate Army. Here is my card, and I shall be most pleased to see you at my house.”
Pelham and Darrell were nearly knocked down by this unexpected invitation. They did not know that a Virginian never loses the habit of asking Thomas, Richard, and Henry to call upon him, on the slightest provocation and often without any provocation at all. But they recognized in a moment that this handsome and courtly person who went around recklessly inviting street acquaintances to visit his house, was a gentleman of purest rays serene, and being of the same caste themselves, and thereby made free, both of them promptly accepted. Pelham, who was quick of wit where Darrell was slow, introduced himself and his friend, each handing his card.
“Ah!” cried General Brandon, “so you are officers of the British Army. I am more than pleased to meet you. I am, like most persons in my native state, of unmixed English descent, my family being a younger branch of the Suffolk-Brandons; and I also am of the profession of arms. I was in the old army, where I held the rank of major, and afterward, when I followed my state out of the Union, I had the honor of being brigadier-general in the army of the Southern Confederacy. Permit me to introduce you to my daughter.” And this General Brandon proceeded to do. Elizabeth bowed and smiled and was not at all taken aback by the suddenness of the acquaintance. Virginians think that all well-bred persons constitute a sort of national and international oligarchy, whereof every member is or ought to be known to every other member.