There was the graceful figure of his dreams in her plain black bombazine dress worn without the slightest challenge to favor, the black crape veil floating backward from the ethereally fair face, the glittering gold-flecked brown hair beneath the white ruche, called the "widow's cap," in the edge of her bonnet. Her fine gray eyes were cast toward the house with a languid smile as the "ladies" tapped on the pane of the library window and signed farewell. Beside her Julius scanned a tall, well-set-up man in a blue uniform and the insignia of a captain of artillery, with blond hair and beard, a grave, handsome face, a dignified manner, a presence implying many worldly and social values. This walk was an occasion of moment to Baynell. The opportunity had arisen in the simplest manner. There was to be the funeral of a friend of Judge Roscoe's in the neighborhood, and at the table he had been arranging how "the family should be represented," to use his formal phrase, for business necessitated his absence. "But I will walk over with _you_, Leonora, although I cannot stay for the services. I will call by for you later." It was natural, both in the interests of civility and his own pleasure, that Baynell should offer to take the old gentleman's place, urging that an officer was the most efficient escort in the unsettled state of the country; and, indeed, how could they refuse? He, however, thought only of her acceptability to him. Apart from her beauty he had never known a woman who so conformed to his ideals of the appropriate, despite the grotesque folly of her blighted romance. It was only her nobility of nature, he argued, that had compassed her unhappiness in that instance. The graces of her magnanimity would not have been wasted on him, he protested inwardly. He appreciated that they were fine and high qualities thus cast before swine and ruthlessly trampled underfoot. She herself had lacked in naught--but the unworthy subject of the largess of her heart. It was Baynell who talked as they took their way through the grove and down the hill. Now and again she lifted her eyes, murmured assent, seemed to listen, always subacutely following the trend of her own reflections. He would not intrude into the house of affliction, being a stranger, he said, and therefore he strolled about outside during the melancholy obsequies, patiently waiting till she came out again and joined him. She seemed cast down, agitated; he thought her of a delicately sensitive organization. "How familiar death is becoming in these war times!" she said drearily, when they were out of the crowd once more and fairly homeward bound. "There was not one woman of the hundred in that house who is not wearing mourning."