ou, Miss Fleming."

A vague, subtle change passed over her. It was no definable alteration
in mind or body, yet a keener observer than the captain might have
suspected a readjustment of both to suit some possible new relation.

Mr. Waring and the judge joined them, and they all walked together
toward the house, engrossed with their errand. Miss Fleming never
expected from men the finical gallantry usually paid to young ladies,
and even the gallant Virginian did not give it to her. The captain
indeed, perceiving that she was occupied with Judge Rhodes, gave her up
to his escort. "It is almost four. I will go down the road and find the
carriage and William," he said, and left them.

Judge Rhodes, as they drew near the house, regarded it darkly: "Decay!
death and decay!" waving his pudgy red hands theatrically. "A gloomy
gate indeed, through which the dead might well choose to return."

"I should call it a badly-set stage for a poor melodrama," said Miss
Fleming coolly.

"But your character is so practical! You are fortunate in that." The
judge, who was a stout, bald man, gazed at the house with vague
abstraction and dilating nostrils. "Now, I am peculiarly susceptible to
spiritual influences. I have been since a boy as sensitive to pain, to,
ah--sympathies, to those, ah--electric cords, as Byron says, wherewith
we're darkly bound, as--as a wind-harp. I really dread the effect upon
myself of the revelations of to-day."

Miss Fleming was silent. The judge, as she knew, was one of those shrewd
common-sense men who, when lifted out of their place into the region of
sentiment or romance, swagger and generally misconduct themselves, like
a workman conscious of his ill-fitting Sunday finery.

One or two carriages drove up to the gate and stopped.

"Who are those people, Mr. Waring?" said the judge, dropping into his
ordinary tone.

Mr. Waring put on his eye-glasses. He knew everybody, and had as keen
an eye and strong an antipathy for eccentric characters in conventional
Philadelphia as a proof-reader for false type. "There is Dehr, the
German homoeopath and Spiritualist," he said in a little mild voice,
which oddly reminded Miss Fleming of the gurgling flow of new milk.
"That woman marching before him is his wife."

"I know," muttered the judge--"strong-minded. Most extraordinary women
turn up every day here. This one lectures on hygiene. Mad, undoubtedly."

"Oh no," said Waring--"very dull, good people, both of the