rbin's coming at all; she might
even have met him in time to hurry him and her cousin's provocative
remains out of the country. In the midst of these reflections she had
to pass the little hillside cemetery. It was a spot of great natural
beauty, cypress-shadowed and luxuriant. It was justly celebrated in
Pineville, and, but for its pretentious tombstones, might have been
peaceful and suggestive. Here she recognized a figure just turning from
its gate. It was Julia Jeffcourt.

Her first instinct--that she was too late and that her cousin had come
to the cemetery to make some arrangements for the impending burial--was,
however, quickly dissipated by the young girl's manner.

"Well, Sally Dows, YOU here! who'd have thought of seeing you to-day?
Why, Chet Brooks allowed that you danced every set last night and
didn't get home till daylight. And you--you that are going to show up
at another party to-night too! Well, I reckon I haven't got that much
ambition these times. And out with your new bonnet too."

There was a slight curl of her handsome lip as she looked at her cousin.
She was certainly a more beautiful girl than Miss Sally; very tall, dark
and luminous of eye, with a brunette pallor of complexion, suggesting,
it was said, that remote mixture of blood which was one of the unproven
counts of Miss Miranda's indictment against her family. Miss Sally
smiled sweetly behind her big bow. "If you reckon to tie to everything
that Chet Brooks says, you'll want lots of string, and you won't be safe
then. You ought to have heard him run on about this one, and that one,
and that other one, not an hour ago in our parlor. I had to pack him
off, saying he was even making Judy's niggers tired." She stopped and
added with polite languor, "I suppose there's no news up at yo' house
either? Everything's going on as usual--and--you get yo' California
draft regularly?"

A good deal of the white of Julia's beautiful eyes showed as she turned
indignantly on the speaker. "I wish, cousin Sally, you'd just let up
talking to me about that money. You know as well as I do that I allowed
to maw I wouldn't take a cent of it from the first! I might have had all
the gowns and bonnets"--with a look at Miss Sally's bows--"I wanted from
her; she even offered to take me to St. Louis for a rig-out--if I'd been
willing to take blood money. But I'd rather stick to this old sleazy
mou'nin' for Tom"--she gave a dramatic pluck at her faded black
skirt--"th