“I confess to having observed her closely, but not enough so to tell the size of her slipper. Come now, who is she? Some lady you spirited away from Secessiondom? Tell me,—you know you’ve nothing to fear from steady old Tom.” For an instant the eyes of the two brothers met, with a curious expression in each. Both were conscious of something they were trying to conceal, while a feeling akin to a pang shot through Jimmie’s heart as he thought how much more worthy of Annie Graham’s respect was steady old Tom than a rollicking young scapegrace like himself. “From your rather minute description I think you must have stumbled upon the _Widow Graham_,” he said. “Rose has taken her up, you know, and as a word of brotherly advice, let me say that if you wish to raise Rose to the seventh heaven you have only to praise her protégée. We, that is the widow and I, do not get on very well, for she is a staunch patriot, and until this morning I verily believe she looked on me as a kind of monster. She’s a perfect little Puritan, too, and if she stays here long, will make a straight-laced Methodist of Rose, under the garb of an Episcopalian, of course, as she is the strictest kind of a church woman.” “I shall not esteem her less for that,” Tom said, and in rather a perturbed state of mind, as far as the Widow Graham was concerned, he went with Jimmie to the parlor, half hoping his brother had mischievously misled him, and that the stranger would prove after all to be some visitor from Boston. But the first object he saw on entering the parlor was the dainty figure in black, standing by the window, and on the third finger of the hand raised to adjust the heavy curtain glittered the wedding ring. Tom knew now that Jimmie had not deceived him, and with a feeling of disappointment he addressed _Mrs. Graham_, when introduced by Jimmie, making some playful allusion to their having met before, but saying nothing to her then of George, for remembering his own feelings when Mary died, he knew that Annie would not thank him, a stranger, to bring up sad memories of the past by talking of her husband. Still, in his manner toward her there was something which told how he pitied and sympathized with her, and Annie, grateful always for the smallest kindness threw off her air of quiet reserve and talked with him freely, asking many questions concerning Isaac Simms and the condition of the Richmond prisoners generally. “She was going round after dinner to call on Isaac,” she incidentally said, whereupon Tom rejoined that wishing to know how Isaac bore the journey and the excitement, he had intended going there himself, and would, with her permission, time his visit to suit her convenience, and so accompany her.