The house was two-storied and square, with big white pillars in front. Large verandahs ran entirely around the house, about which climbed dense masses of ivy and honeysuckle. As I alighted from the ambulance, I heard a chattering and saw a large mule run out the front door, driven by a lady with a broom. The mule lay down on the verandah and the lady advanced to meet me. "Ah you Miss Cook?" she asked, in the soft slurring accent. I bowed. "Ah am Mrs. DeVere," she said. "Come in, and look out for that dam mule. I can't keep him out of the house." I went in the parlor and looked about me in amazement. The room was magnificently furnished, but I could see the Southern sloth and carelessness visible everywhere. A wheelbarrow full of dried mortar stood in one corner that had been left there when the masons built the house. Five or six chickens were roosting on the piano and a pair of pants were hanging on the chandelier. Mrs. DeVere had a pale, aristocratic face, with Grecian features, and snowy hair arranged carefully in becoming ringlets. She was dressed in black satin and wore flashing diamonds on her hands and at her throat. Her eyes were black and piercing and her eyebrows dark. As I took my seat, she drew a long piece of plug tobacco from a silver card receiver, and bit off a chew. "Do you indulge?" she asked smilingly. I shook my head. "The h--l you don't!" she replied. Just then a horse dashed up to the verandah--or gallery, as they call it in Texas--and someone dismounted and entered the room. * * * * * I shall never forget my first sight of Aubrey DeVere. He was fully seven feet in height, and his face was perfect. It was the absolute image of Andrea del Sarto's painting of the young Saint John. His eyes were immense, dark, and filled with a haunting sadness, and his pale, patrician features and air of haut monde stamped him at once as the descendant of a long line of aristocrats. He wore a dress suit of the latest cut, but I noticed that he was barefooted, and down from each side of his mouth trickled a dark brown stream of tobacco juice. On his head was an enormous Mexican sombrero. He wore no shirt, but his dress coat, thrown back from his broad chest, revealed an enormous scintillating diamond tied with a piece of twine strung into the meshes of his gauze undershirt. "My son, Aubrey; Miss Cook," said Mrs. DeVere languidly. Mr. DeVere took a chew of tobacco from his mouth and tossed it behind the piano. "The lady who has kindly consented to assume our scholastic duties, I presume," he said, in a deep musical baritone. I inclined my head. "I know your countrymen," he said with a dark frown upon his handsome face. "They still grope among their benighted traditions of ignorance and prejudice. What do you think of Jefferson Davis?" I looked into his flashing eye without flinching. "He was a traitor," I said.