As she went on he found that her world was as different from his own as if she dwelt upon some undiscovered planet--a world peopled with shades and governed by an ideal group of abstract laws. She lived upon lies, he saw, and thrived upon the sweetness she extracted from them. For her the Confederacy had never fallen, the quiet of her dreamland had been disturbed by no invading army, and the three hundred slaves, who had in reality scattered like chaff before the wind, she still saw in her cheerful visions tilling her familiar fields. It was as if she had fallen asleep with the great blow that bad wrecked her body, and had dreamed on steadily throughout the years. Of real changes she was as ignorant as a new-born child. Events had shaken the world to its centre, and she, by her obscure hearth, had not felt so much as a sympathetic tremor. In her memory there was no Appomattox, news of the death of Lincoln had never reached her ears, and president had peacefully succeeded president in the secure Confederacy in which she lived. Wonderful as it all was, to Carraway the most wonderful thing was the intricate tissue of lies woven around her chair. Lies--lies--there had been nothing but lies spoken within her hearing for twenty years. CHAPTER VII. In Which a Stand is Made Dim wonder was still upon him when Docia appeared bearing her mistress's dinner-tray, and a moment later Cynthia came in and paused uncertainly near the threshold. "Do you wish anything, mother?" "Only to present Mr. Carraway, my child. He will be with us at dinner." Cynthia came forward smiling and held out her hand with the cordial hospitality which she had inherited with the family portraits and the good old name. She wore this morning a dress of cheap black calico, shrunken from many washings, and beneath the scant sleeves Carraway saw her thin red wrists, which looked as if they had been soaking in harsh soapsuds. Except for a certain ease of manner which she had not lost in the drudgery of her life, she might have been sister to the toilworn slattern he had noticed in one of the hovels across the country. "We shall be very glad to have you," she said, with quiet dignity. "It is ready now, I think." "Be sure to make him try the port, Cynthia," called Mrs. Blake, as Carraway followed the daughter across the threshold.