The Valiants of Virginia

Rosewood, Major Montague Bristow sat

e rainbows, at variance with his heavy iron-gray hair and imperial. His head was leonine and he looked like a king who has humbled his enemy. It may be added that his linen was fine and immaculate, his black string-tie precisely tied and a pair of gold-rimmed

"the major's brutal, and he

d the other, her brows wrinkli

ed me that I'm

n law and legislature it had been said of him that he could neither speak on the tariff questio

the sort,"

l, almost a droll uneasiness. "Why, I've got every emotion I've ever had. I read all the n

hing down, she drew one of the fragile blue-veined hands up against her cheek, her bronze hair, its

ough its open-work stocking like mother-of-pearl. "Imagine! In May. And he knows I'm vain of my feet! Major, if you had ever had a wife, you would

en she isn't looking, I pour it into the bush there. See those huge, maudlin-looking roses?

e, "you need 'em, I reckon. You need more than mint-juleps, too. You leave the whisky to me and the d

." She lifted her hand and touched her heart. "It's been so for a

"Judith!" he said, and his hand twitched, "

, the doctor brought him to me. I'd known it before in a way, but it had gone farther than I thought. No

s voice was husky when he sp

en, in sudden sharpness: "You shan't

ssured her quickly

uthall and you and me. We three have

udith,

y that keeps us young, and I didn't get my fair share of that, Monty. For just one little week my heart had it all-all-and then-well, then it was finished. It was finished long befor

Judith,

never in love-really in love, I mean. Certainly not with me, Monty, though you tried

little guiltily; but her eyes had turned away. They were gazing between the catalpas to where, far off on a gentle rise, the stained

sville-later maturer years about Damory Court when the trail of sex had deepened into man's passion and the devil's rivalry. It had been a curious three-sided affair-he, and Valiant, and Sassoon. Sassoon with his dissipated flair and ungovernable temper and strange fits of recklessness; clean, high-idealed, straight-away Valiant; and he-a Bristow, neither better nor worse than the rest of his name. He remembered that ma

romise

my hand against him. Never, never!" Then the same voice, vibrant

ame. What had it mattered then to him what she had repl

me had blown away the dust! "T

e fascinating little lights and whorls in it." She turned toward him, but he sat rigidly u

me-things, that I take out and set round the room ... and there is a handful of old letters I go over from first to last. They're almost worn out now, but I could repeat them all with my eyes shut. Then, there's a tiny old straw basket with a yellow wisp in it that once was a bunch of cape jessamines. I wore them to that last ball-the night before it happened. The fourteenth of May used

gravel. "It's a black date for you too, Monty. I know. But men and women are d

demijohn," he s

John Valiant's closest friends. What did you two care what people said? Why, women don't stick to each other like that! It isn't in petticoats! It wouldn

le bleakly, and c

that I'm getting old. But the date brings it very close; it seems, somehow, closer than

tainly

g sorry for me, which I never could stand. Well, he was a man any one might honor. I've always thought a woman oug

lived, Judit

it in the sun and purr. And I've had people enough, and books to read, and plenty of pretty things to look at, and old lace to wear, and I've kept my figure and my vanity-I'm not too old yet to thank the Lord for that! So don't talk t

where the two figures sat under the rose-arbor, the mother's face turned lovingly down t

"It's been a long time, too, since I began to want you to-'most forty ye

he strode on. "You just couldn't make yourself care, could you! Peo