Enter My Lady Berenicia Cross. It is averred that all the evils and miseries of our existence were entailed upon us by the meddlesome and altogether gratuitous perverseness of one weak-headed woman. Although faith in the personal influence of Eve upon the ages is visibly waning in these incredulous, iconoclastic times, there still remains enough respect for the possibilities for mischief inherent within a single silly woman to render Lady Berenicia Cross and her works intelligible, even to the fifth and sixth generations. I knew that she was a fool the moment I first laid eyes on her--as she stood courtesying and simpering to us on the lawn in front of Johnson Hall, her patched and raddled cheeks mocking the honest morning sunlight. I take no credit that my eyes had a clearer vision than those of my companions, but grieve instead that it was not ordered otherwise. We had ridden up to the hall, this bright, warm May forenoon, on our first visit of the spring to the Johnsons. There is a radiant picture of this morning ride still fresh in my memory. Daisy, I remember, sat on a pillion behind Mr. Stewart, holding him by the shoulder, and jogging pleasantly along with the motion of the old horse. Our patron looked old in this full, broad light; the winter had obviously aged him. His white, queued hair no longer needed powder; his light blue eyes seemed larger than ever under the bristling brows, still dark in color; the profile of his lean face, which had always been so nobly commanding in outline, had grown sharper of late, and bended nose and pointed chin were closer together, from the shrinking of the lips. But he sat erect as of old, proud of himself and of the beautiful girl behind him. And she _was_ beautiful, was our Daisy! Her rounded, innocent face beamed with pleasure from its camlet hood, as sweet and suggestive of fragrance as a damask rose against the blue sky. It was almost a childish face in its simplicity and frankness, yet already beginning to take on a woman's thoughtfulness and a woman's charm of tint and texture. We often thought that her parents must have had other than Palatine peasant blood, so delicate and refined were her features, not realizing that books and thoughts help far more toward making faces than does ancestry. Just the edge of her wavy light-brown hair could be seen under the frill of the hood, with lines of gold upon it painted by the sun. She laughed and talked gayly as our horses climbed the hills. I thought, as I rode by their side, how happy we all were, and how beautiful was she--this flower plucked from the rapine and massacre of the Old War! And I fancy the notion that we were no longer children began dancing in my head a little, too.