"I don't know about that," said Prescott. "My friend Talbot gave five hundred dollars for a paper collar. That was last year, and paper collars must be dearer now. So I imagine that your paper of pins will cost at least two thousand dollars."
"I am not so foolish as to go shopping with our Confederate money. I carry gold," she replied. With her disengaged hand she tapped a little purse she carried in her pocket and it gave forth an opulent tinkle.
She was driving rapidly, chattering incessantly, but in such a gay and light fashion that Prescott's attention never wandered from herself—the red glow of her cheeks, the changing light of her eyes and the occasional gleam of white teeth as her lips parted in a laugh. Thus he did not notice that she was taking him by a long road, and that one or two whom they passed on the street looked after them in meaning fashion.
Prescott was not in love with Mrs. Markham, but he was charmed. Hers was a soft and soothing touch after a hard blow. A healing hand was outstretched to him by a beautiful woman who would be adorable to make love to—if she did not already belong to another man, such an old curmudgeon as General Markham, too! How tightly curled the tiny ringlets on her neck! He was sitting so close that he could not help seeing them and now and then they moved lightly under his breath.
He remembered that they were a long time in reaching the shop, but he did not care and said nothing. When they arrived at last she asked him to hold the lines while she went inside. She returned in a few minutes and triumphantly held up a small package.
"See," she said, "I have made my purchase, but it was the last they had, and no one can say when Richmond will be able to import another paper of pins. Maybe we shall have to ask General Grant."
"And then he won't let us," said Prescott.
She laughed and glanced up at him from under the long, curling eyelashes. The green tints showed faintly in her eyes and were singularly seductive. She made no effort to conceal her high good humour, and Prescott now and then felt her warm breath on his cheek as she turned to speak to him in intimate fashion.
She drove back by a road not the same, but as long as before, and Prescott found it all too short. His gloom fled away before her flow of spirits, her warm and intimate manner, and the town, though under gray November skies, became vivid with light and colour.
"Do you know," she said, "that the Mosaic Club meets again to-night and perhaps for the last time? Are you not coming?"