"Why, confound the fellow! He doesn't care a fig whether I live or die." Then he was sensible of a rising anger, that he should be made the subterfuge of a systematic endeavor to casually meet Mrs. Gwynn,--likely to prove successful in the last instance. For lowering clouds overspread the sky when Ashley entered late in the afternoon, and a storm so violent, so tumultuous, broke with such sudden fury that it was impossible for him to take leave had he desired this. Baynell knew that nothing was further from his comrade's wish. Ashley reconciled himself so swiftly to Judge Roscoe's insistence that he should remain to tea that it might seem he had come for that express purpose. "Dat man," soliloquized the "double-faced Janus" impressively, "mus' hev' smelled de perfume of dat ar flummery plumb ter de camp. Chaney wuz jes' dishin' up when he ring de door-bell!" CHAPTER IV Now, face to face with the long-sought opportunity, Colonel Ashley was grievously disappointed. A woman--young, singularly beautiful, dressed like a middle-aged frump, with the manners of a matron of fifty, staid, reserved, inattentive, uninterested! The incongruity affected him like a discourtesy; its rarity had no attractions for him, nor in the slightest degree roused his curiosity. He had expected charm, glow, responsiveness, coquetry,--all the various traits that attend on beauty and youth. Even a conscious hauteur would have had its special grace and piqued an effort to win her to cordiality, but here was the inexpressiveness, the indifference, of an elderly woman, one tired, despondent, done with the world--civil, indeed, as behooved her rearing, her station, but unnoting--really apart from all the interests of the present and all thought for the future. And, certainly, Mrs. Gwynn's life might be considered already lived out in her past. The rain fell in sheets, and Colonel Ashley wished himself back in camp, despite the flavor of the flummery. As they sat at table, now and again a vivid glare of lightning revealed through the windows the expanse of falling water, closely wrought as a silver-gray fabric, and the flash of white foam from its impact with the ground. The house seemed to rock with the reverberations of the bursts of thunder. When they were once more in the library, Colonel Ashley found himself with a long evening on his hands; his chum, Baynell, had fallen into one of his frequent fits of silent reflectiveness as he smoked, and Judge Roscoe, an ascetic, quiet, uncongenial old man, of opposite political convictions,--which placed an embargo on all the topics of the day,--did not seem to promise much in the way of lively companionship.