More so when she gave me the slightest
dip of a courtesy and laid her dainty, wrinkled little hand in mine,
and said in the sweetest possible voice how glad she was to see me
after so many years, and how grateful she felt for all my kindness to
the dear colonel. Then she sank into a quaint rocking-chair that Chad
had brought down behind her, rested her feet on a low stool that
mysteriously appeared from under the table, and took her knitting from
her reticule.
She had changed somewhat since I last saw her, but only as would an
old bit of precious stuff that grew the more mellow and harmonious in
tone as it grew the older. She had the same silky gray hair--a trifle
whiter, perhaps; the same frank, tender mouth, winning wherever she
smiled; the same slight, graceful figure; and the same manner--its
very simplicity a reflex of that refined and quiet life she had always
led. For hers had been an isolated life, buried since her girlhood in
a great house far away from the broadening influences of a city, and
saddened by the daily witness of a slow decay of all she had been
taught to revere.
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