Angela was, however, eating her soul out with envy of Adrienne. Like most girls of nineteen, she knew neither past nor future, and it seemed to her as if Adrienne would ever remain the beautiful, seductive creature she was now. Angela felt herself distinctly inferior, and as she had enjoyed that subtlest form of flattery, being made much of, this feeling of inferiority was painful to her. But in this, as in all things else, the world was changed. The soul of things was altered and nothing was as it had once been. One morning in early June, when the family was assembled at breakfast, Colonel Tremaine pointed out of the open window and across the wide-pillared portico to the broad, bright river running honey-colored in the morning sun. A small sloop, painted a dull gray, was passing up the river, the fresh breeze swelling her brown sails and carrying her fast through the bright water. “That’s Captain Ross’s vessel,” said Colonel Tremaine. “He has evidently run the blockade and has probably brought a valuable cargo with him.” “Wouldn’t it be well, my dear,” asked Mrs. Tremaine, pouring out the colonel’s second cup of potato coffee, “if I should order the carriage this morning and go to Captain Ross’s house? We’re running short of supplies of many things.” “It would be most judicious, my dearest Sophie,” answered the colonel, his white teeth showing in a smile, “if Captain Ross were a patriotic person, but unluckily he declines to receive either the State money of Virginia or Confederate money, and we have no other sort.” Mrs. Tremaine sighed and answered after a moment: “I’m not surprised at Captain Ross. I always thought him a very ordinary person, and he proves himself to be entirely without patriotism.” Mrs. Tremaine, ever willing to give all she had to the Confederacy, thought it strange that Captain Ross should not undertake the risks and dangers of blockade-running and then sell his goods for a promise to pay. “It isn’t that I mind our privations,” Mrs. Tremaine continued. “And I’m sure you, my dear, wouldn’t hesitate at any sacrifice for our country, but it distresses me to think that our guests shouldn’t have their accustomed comforts.” It distressed Colonel Tremaine very much that with two wardrobes full of clothes, he was compelled to wear homespun, but it distressed him far more to think that the guests under his roof should want for anything, and so he expressed himself. “I really relish the substitute for coffee which your ingenuity, my dearest Sophie, has supplied, but I’m afraid that Madame Isabey wouldn’t care for it.” “Naw, suh,” said Hector, hurling himself into the conversation. “Me an’ de ole lady had a collusion ’bout dat coffee. I teck some ob your ’tato coffee up to dat ole lady----” “Madame Isabey, you mean, Hector,” said Mrs. Tremaine in mild reproof.