So highly strung was her mood that she noticed almost with approval that he had said "is" and not "was." He had at least not deprived his wife of her birthright as a daughter of the sacred soil. She began to be aware of a growing excitement. She could hardly have heard unmoved any allusion to a marriage which had taken from the South a woman born to its traditions and to its sorrows. She felt a fresh impulse of anger against this prosperous son of the North who had carried away from a Virginia mother a daughter as she had been robbed of hers. The cruel pang of crushed motherhood which ached within her at the remembrance of her own child, the child she had herself cast off because of her marriage, was so fierce that for a moment she could not command her voice. She could not shape the question which was in her heart, but she felt that with her eyes she all but commanded the stranger to tell her more. "We live in the North," he explained, "but she has long promised the boy that when he was eight he should see the relics of his Virginian grandfather which are in the museum here. Unfortunately, when the time came, she was not well enough to come with him; and as she wished him to be here on this especial day, I have brought him." The Southern woman felt her heart beating tumultuously, and it was almost as if another spoke when she said in a manner entirely conventional:-- "I trust that her illness is not serious." "If it were, I should not be here myself," he answered. She collected her strength, which seemed to be leaving her, and forced herself to look around the room. She could not have told what she expected, or whether she most hoped or feared what she might see. "But your son?" she asked. The man's face changed subtly. "My father," he replied, "was an officer in the Union army. I wished to see this place first, to be prepared for Desborough's questions. It is n't easy to answer the questions of a clever lad whose two grandfathers have been killed in the same battle, fighting on opposite sides." The name struck her like a blow. She leaned for support against the corner of the nearest case, and fixed her gaze on the pathetic coat of General Lee behind the glass which showed her as a faint wraith the reflection of her own face. Desborough had been her husband's name, and this the anniversary of his death; she felt as if the dead had arisen to confront her, and that some imperative call in the blood insistently responded. Yet she could not believe that her son-in-law was before her, regarding her with that straightforward, appealingly honest gaze; she said to herself that the name was merely a coincidence, that every day in the year was the anniversary of the death of some Virginian hero, and that this could not be her daughter's husband. "Have you decided what to tell your son?" she heard her voice, strange and far off, asking amid the thrilling quiet of the room.