A vague, subtle change passed over her. It was no definable alteration in mind or body, yet a keener observer than the captain might have suspected a readjustment of both to suit some possible new relation.
Mr. Waring and the judge joined them, and they all walked together toward the house, engrossed with their errand. Miss Fleming never expected from men the finical gallantry usually paid to young ladies, and even the gallant Virginian did not give it to her. The captain indeed, perceiving that she was occupied with Judge Rhodes, gave her up to his escort. "It is almost four. I will go down the road and find the carriage and William," he said, and left them.
Judge Rhodes, as they drew near the house, regarded it darkly: "Decay! death and decay!" waving his pudgy red hands theatrically. "A gloomy gate indeed, through which the dead might well choose to return."
"I should call it a badly-set stage for a poor melodrama," said Miss Fleming coolly.
"But your character is so practical! You are fortunate in that." The judge, who was a stout, bald man, gazed at the house with vague abstraction and dilating nostrils. "Now, I am peculiarly susceptible to spiritual influences. I have been since a boy as sensitive to pain, to, ah—sympathies, to those, ah—electric cords, as Byron says, wherewith we're darkly bound, as—as a wind-harp. I really dread the effect upon myself of the revelations of to-day."
Miss Fleming was silent. The judge, as she knew, was one of those shrewd common-sense men who, when lifted out of their place into the region of sentiment or romance, swagger and generally misconduct themselves, like a workman conscious of his ill-fitting Sunday finery.
One or two carriages drove up to the gate and stopped.
"Who are those people, Mr. Waring?" said the judge, dropping into his ordinary tone.
Mr. Waring put on his eye-glasses. He knew everybody, and had as keen an eye and strong an antipathy for eccentric characters in conventional Philadelphia as a proof-reader for false type. "There is Dehr, the German homœopath and Spiritualist," he said in a little mild voice, which oddly reminded Miss Fleming of the gurgling flow of new milk. "That woman marching before him is his wife."
"I know," muttered the judge—"strong-minded. Most extraordinary women turn up every day here. This one lectures on hygiene. Mad, undoubtedly."