There were three or four of the Colonel’s daughters--all tall, well-made girls, with strikingly dark skins, and what we took to be gypsyish faces. Their appearance certainly bore out the rumor that their mother had been an opera-singer--some said an Italian, others a lady of Louisiana Creole extraction. No information, except that she was dead, ever came to hand about this person. Her daughters, however, were very much in evidence. They seemed always to wear white dresses, and they were always to be seen somewhere, either on their lawn playing croquet, or in the streets, or at the windows of their house. The consciousness of their existence pervaded the whole village from morning till night. To watch their goings and comings, and to speculate upon the identity and business of the friends from strange parts who were continually arriving to visit them, grew to be quite the standing occupation of the idler portion of the community. Before such of our young people as naturally took the lead in these matters had had time to decide how best to utilize for the general good this influx of beauty, wealth, and ancestral dignity, the village was startled by an unlooked-for occurrence. A red carpet was spread one forenoon from the curb to the doorway of the Episcopal church: the old-fashioned Parmalee carriage turned out, with its driver clasping white reins in white cotton gloves; we had a confused glimpse of the dark Parmalee girls with bouquets in their hands, and dressed rather more in white than usual: and then astonished Octavius learned that two of them had been married, right there under its very eyes, and had departed with their husbands. It gave an angry twist to the discovery to find that the bridegrooms were both strangers, presumably from New York. This episode had the figurative effect of doubling or trebling the height of that stone wall which stood between the Parmalee place and the public. Such budding hopes and projects of intimacy as our villagers may have entertained toward these polished newcomers fell nipped and lifeless on the stroke. Shortly afterward--that is to say, in the autumn of 1860--the family went away, and the big house was shut up. News came in time that the Colonel was dead: something was said about another daughter’s marriage; then the war broke out, and gave us other things to think of. We forgot all about the Parmalees.