azine work, and which did he consider preferable, as a career
which such a young lady might follow without injury to her social
standing?

The colonel, with some amusement, answered these artless inquiries as
best he could; they came as a refreshing foil to the sweet but
melancholy memories of the past. They were interesting, too, from this
very pretty but very ignorant little girl in this backward little
Southern town. She was a flash of sunlight through a soft gray cloud;
a vigorous shoot from an old moss-covered stump--she was life, young
life, the vital principle, breaking through the cumbering envelope,
and asserting its right to reach the sun.

After a while a couple of very young ladies, friends of Graciella,
dropped in. They were introduced to the colonel, who found that he had
known their fathers, or their mothers, or their grandfathers, or their
grandmothers, and that many of them were more or less distantly
related. A little later a couple of young men, friends of Graciella's
friends--also very young, and very self-conscious--made their
appearance, and were duly introduced, in person and by pedigree. The
conversation languished for a moment, and then one of the young ladies
said something about music, and one of the young men remarked that he
had brought over a new song. Graciella begged the colonel to excuse
them, and led the way to the parlour, followed by her young friends.

Mrs. Treadwell had fallen asleep, and was leaning comfortably back in
her armchair. Miss Laura excused herself, brought a veil, and laid it
softly across her mother's face.

"The night air is not damp," she said, "and it is pleasanter for her
here than in the house. She won't mind the music; she is accustomed to
it."

Graciella went to the piano and with great boldness of touch struck
the bizarre opening chords and then launched into the grotesque words
of the latest New York "coon song," one of the first and worst of its
kind, and the other young people joined in the chorus.

It was the first discordant note. At home, the colonel subscribed to
the opera, and enjoyed the music. A plantation song of the olden time,
as he remembered it, borne upon the evening air, when sung by the
tired slaves at the end of their day of toil, would have been
pleasing, with its simple melody, its plaintive minor strains, its
notes of vague longing; but to the colonel's senses there was to-night
no music in this hackneyed popular favourite. In a met