Mrs. Gwynn was filling a large bowl on a centre-table with a gorgeous cluster of deep red tulips, and Baynell noticed that she had thrust two or three into the dense knot of fair hair at the nape of her neck. As she turned around one of the swaying bells was still visible, giving its note of fervid brilliancy to her face. Her dress was a white mull, of simple make--old, even with a delicate darn on one of its floating open sleeves, but to one familiar with her appearance in the sombre garb of widowhood she seemed radiant in a sort of splendor. What was then called a "Spanish waist," a deeply pointed girdle of black velvet, flecked with tiny red tufts, made the sylphlike grace of her figure more pronounced, and at her throat was a collarette of the same material. Her cheeks were flushed. It had been a busy day--with the morning lessons, with the arrangement of the parlors, the array of materials, the setting of the sewing-machines in order, including two or three of the earlier hand-power contrivances, sent in expressly from the neighbors, the baskets for lint,--one could hear even now the whirring of the grindstone as old Ephraim put a keener edge on the scissors. Last but not least Leonora had accomplished the bedizenment of the "ladies." Adelaide was not born to blush unseen. She realized the solecism that her vanity lured her to commit, yet she said hardily, "Look at _me_, Captain--I'm got me a magenta sash!" "And it's beautiful!" cried Baynell, responsively. "And so are you!" Mrs. Gwynn glanced down at her reprovingly and was out of countenance for a moment. "How odious it is to give to colors the names of battles," she said,--"Magenta and Solferino!" "This is a beautiful color, though," said Baynell. "But the name gives such an ensanguined suggestion," she objected. Her eye critically scanned the three "ladies" in their short white mull dresses and magenta sashes, each with a bow of black velvet in her hair, as they led Captain Baynell into the room, and it did not occur to her till too late to canvass the acceptability of the presence of the Yankee officer to the ladies of the vicinity, assembling in this choice symposium, who had some of them the cruel associations of death itself with the very sight of the uniform.