Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net VIRGINIA By ELLEN GLASGOW GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY MCMXIII _Copyright, 1913, by_ Doubleday, Page & Company _All rights reserved, including that of translation into Foreign Languages, including the Scandinavian._ TO THE RADIANT SPIRIT WHO WAS MY SISTER CARY GLASGOW McCORMACK CONTENTS BOOK FIRST--THE DREAM I. The System II. Her Inheritance III. First Love IV. The Treadwells V. Oliver, the Romantic VI. A Treadwell in Revolt VII. The Artist in Philistia VIII. White Magic IX. The Great Man Moves X. Oliver Surrenders BOOK SECOND--THE REALITY I. Virginia Prepares for the Future II. Virginia's Letters III. The Return IV. Her Children V. Failure VI. The Shadow VII. The Will to Live VIII. The Pang of Motherhood IX. The Problem of the South BOOK THIRD--THE ADJUSTMENT I. The Changing Order II. The Price of Comfort III. Middle-age IV. Life's Cruelties V. Bitterness VI. The Future BOOK FIRST THE DREAM CHAPTER I THE SYSTEM Toward the close of a May afternoon in the year 1884, Miss Priscilla Batte, having learned by heart the lesson in physical geography she would teach her senior class on the morrow, stood feeding her canary on the little square porch of the Dinwiddie Academy for Young Ladies. The day had been hot, and the fitful wind, which had risen in the direction of the river, was just beginning to blow in soft gusts under the old mulberry trees in the street, and to scatter the loosened petals of syringa blossoms in a flowery snow over the grass. For a moment Miss Priscilla turned her flushed face to the scented air, while her eyes rested lovingly on the narrow walk, edged with pointed bricks and bordered by cowslips and wallflowers, which led through the short garden to the three stone steps and the tall iron gate. She was a shapeless yet majestic woman of some fifty years, with a large mottled face in which a steadfast expression of gentle obstinacy appeared to underly the more evanescent ripples of thought or of emotion. Her severe black silk gown, to which she had just changed from her morning dress of alpaca, was softened under her full double chin by a knot of lace and a cameo brooch bearing the helmeted profile of Pallas Athene. On her head she wore a three-cornered cap trimmed with a ruching of organdie, and beneath it her thin gray hair still showed a gleam of faded yellow in the sunlight. She had never been handsome, but her prodigious size had endowed her with an impressiveness which had passed in her youth, and among an indulgent people, for beauty. Only in the last few years had her