ly sweet
voice, song after song as they were demanded. Conversation through the
large room did not cease, but voices were lowered, and now and then came
a complete lull in which all listened. She sang old Creole ditties and
then Scotch and Irish ballads.

Judith found beside her chair the Vice-President. "Ah, Miss Cary, when
you are as old as I am, and have read as much, you will notice how
emphatic is the testimony to song and dance and gaiety on the eve of
events which are to change the world! The flower grows where in an hour
the volcano will burst forth; the bird sings in the tree which the
earthquake will presently uproot; the pearly shell gleams where will
pass the tidal wave--" He looked around the room. "Beauty, zeal, love,
devotion--and to-morrow the smoke will roll, the cannon thunder, and the
brute emerge all the same--just as he always does--just as he always
does--stamping the flower into the mire, wringing the bird's neck,
crushing the shell! Well, well, let's stop moralizing. What's she
singing now? Hm! 'Kathleen Mavourneen.' Ha, Benjamin! What's the news
with you?"

Judith, turning a little aside, dreamily listened now to the singer, now
to phrases of the Vice-President and the Secretary of State. "After
this, if we beat them now, a treaty surely.... Palmerston--The
Emperour--The Queen of Spain--Mason says ... Inefficiency of the
blockade--Cotton obligations--Arms and munitions...." Still talking,
they moved away. A strident voice reached her from the end of the
room--L. Q. C. Lamar, here to-night despite physicians. "The fight had
to come. We are men, not women. The quarrel had lasted long enough. We
hate each other, so the struggle had to come. Even Homer's heroes, after
they had stormed and scolded long enough, fought like brave men, long
and well--"

"Ye banks and braes and streams around
The castle o' Montgomery--"

sang Mrs. Fitzgerald.

There was in the room that slow movement which imperceptibly changes a
well-filled stage, places a figure now here, now there, shifts the
grouping and the lights. Now Judith was one of a knot of younger women.
In the phraseology of the period, all were "belles"; Hetty and Constance
Cary, Mary Triplett, Turner MacFarland, Jenny Pegram, the three Fishers,
Evelyn Cabell, and others. About them came the "beaux,"--the younger
officers who were here to-night, the aides, the unwedded legislators.
Judith listened, talked, played her par