Adrienne by some psychic force felt as if this scene were passing before her in the midst of the crowded levee with the hubbub around her, the voices high-pitched as men’s voices grow in time of war, and with the deep and only half-concealed excitement of soldiers who turn from looking into women’s eyes to meet the face of death in a thousand different forms, and of women who laugh tremulously to-night because after to-morrow they might never laugh again. The crowd, the laughter, the voices, the glances, bold, or shy, or meditative, seemed wholly unreal to Adrienne, and what was tangible was the scene in the quiet study, with Lyddon’s calm voice, as Angela had described--Isabey’s eyes fixed upon Angela with that expression of profound interest and tenderness which Adrienne had observed more than once. When the levee was over and she was back in her room at the hotel, she sat for a long time before her mirror, surveying herself in her laces and diamonds. She pitied Isabey quite as much as herself, for Adrienne was not incapable of generosity. Isabey was only a few days too late when he reached the gate of paradise; it was closing, and nothing can arrest the closing of those immortal gates. One thing, however, Adrienne divined with the prescience of love, that Isabey would have a month of happiness, a little time of radiance when Angela’s image, already strongly impressed upon him, would become a part of himself. The thought of this was poignant to her and kept her awake as she lay in her bed. Angela had written that Isabey’s improvement was wonderful even in the three or four days he had been at Harrowby. It continued so, and in a week he was another man. The thinness about his temples disappeared, and his face was no longer pinched and wan, nor did his uniform hang so pitifully loose upon his figure. In a fortnight he was well except for his arm and leg. He could, with the assistance of a stick, limp about the ground floor, but his arm was still in a sling. Nevertheless, he would abate none of his invalid privileges as far as Angela was concerned. He made the same silent appeal to her for her gentle ministrations, and it never occurred to Angela to withhold them. Life went on, dreamlike, in the isolated country house, and was sweeter for being so dreamlike. Little news of any sort reached them either from the Confederate camp fifteen miles in one direction or the Federal camp twenty miles the other way. The outside world seemed so distant to Angela that what she heard of the crouching dogs of war so close at hand made little impression upon her. However, it was brought home to her through the most unlikely of mediums--Mammy Tulip.