The horses were quiet enough, but it was Hector’s practice to lash them violently just as he was entering the grove in which the church stood and to pull them up almost upon their haunches before the churchyard gate. This programme was executed to the letter on this particular Sunday.
The congregation gathered about the green churchyard and, standing upon the flagged walk which led to the door, watched Colonel Tremaine descend and then assist Mrs. Tremaine out of the carriage. There was some one else to alight, Angela, now Mrs. Neville Tremaine.
At the same moment, Richard and Archie, who preferred riding to driving, dismounted from their horses, and Lyddon, who had walked through the woods to church, contrived to appear upon the scene, desiring to see for himself how Angela would be received. As Colonel Tremaine, with Mrs. Tremaine on his arm, walked along the flagged path, it seemed as if another twenty years had been laid upon them since the last Sunday. Colonel Tremaine’s stiff military figure had lost something of its rigidity, and instead of looking about him and bowing and saluting with the elaborate and somewhat finical courtesy which distinguished him, he looked straight ahead, neither to the right nor to the left, and walked heavily, as if conscious of his seventy-two years.
Mrs. Tremaine was pale and wan and it was noticed that she was all in black, although her dress, as usual, was rich—a black silk gown with mantle and bonnet of black lace. Behind them walked Angela. The day was warm and she wore a white gown and a straw hat crowned with roses. One rapid survey had showed her what to expect. The girl friends with whom she was most associated, for she could not be considered intimate with any, the Carey girls and Dr. Yelverton’s three granddaughters, looked timidly at her and instead of coming forward with effusion to greet her, as they had done all their lives, turned away. George Charteris, who had cherished for Angela the love of a sixteen-year-old boy for a nineteen-year-old girl, stared her angrily in the eye, and would not have spoken to her but for a vigorous nudge given him by Mrs. Charteris, who alone spoke kindly to Angela. She did not, however, advance, and Angela, for the first time in her life, walked alone and shunned across the churchyard and to the church door.
She suddenly grew conscious of Richard’s voice behind her speaking with a stranger, evidently in surprise at seeing him, and then both advanced. Angela turned involuntarily and recognized instantly from his picture Philip Isabey.
He was of a type site had never seen before—the unmistakable French creole, below rather than above middle height, his dark features well cut and delicately finished as a woman’s, and more distinguished than handsome. He wore a perfectly new Confederate captain’s uniform, and gilt buttons glittered down the front of his well-fitting coat. To most of the people present it was the first Confederate uniform they had seen, and it stirred them with consciousness of war and conflict at hand.
Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine had stopped at the church door, and Richard, coming up with Isabey, introduced him to them. “My old university friend,” he said, “and chum of my Paris days.”
Colonel Tremaine greeted Isabey with overwhelming courtesy, and Mrs. Tremaine said with sweet reproach: “Why is it that you didn’t come straight to Harrowby?”
“Because, my dear madam,” replied Isabey, holding his cap in his hand, “I only reached here last night and I was told by the tavern keeper at the courthouse that I should certainly meet my friend Tremaine at this church to-day.”
“You went to Billy Miller’s tavern?” cried Colonel Tremaine, aghast. “Great God, nobody goes to a tavern who has any respectable acquaintances! We could get on very well without such a thing as a tavern in the State of Virginia.”