They clasped hands upon it, and old Samson Hat, sitting back, was heard to chuckle aloud such a warming laugh, that Meshach's response to it, in a sudden pallid shivering, seemed slightly out of keeping. He was recalled, however, by the entrance of Judge Custis with his daughter, and her maid, Virgie.

Vesta was very pale, but neither shrinking nor negative. On the contrary, she supported her father rather than received his support, and Milburn saw the Judge's worn, helpless face, with the pride faded from it, and pity for his daughter absorbing every other feeling of depression.

He wore his best cloth suit, with the coat tails falling to his knees behind, the body cut square to the hips, and the collar raised high upon his stock of white enamelled English leather. His low-buttoned vest exposed his shirt-buttons of crystal and gilt, and a ruffle, ironed by Roxy's slender hands with nimble touches, parted down the middle like sea foam on shell, and similar ruffles at the wrists were clasped by chain buttons of pearl and silver. His vest was of figured Marseilles stuff, and gaiters of the same material partly covered his shoes; and his heavy seal, with his coat of arms upon it, fell from a pale ribbon at his fob. Debtor though he was, and answering at the bar of the church to a heavy personal and family judgment, his large and flowing lines of body, deeply cut chin, full eyes, and natural height and grace of stature made him a marked and noble presence anywhere.

Vesta Custis, dropping off a mantle of blue velvet at a touch of her maid, stood in a party dress of white silk, the neck, shoulders, and arms bare; and, as she halted a minute in the aisle, Virgie struck the cloth sandals from her mistress's white slippers of silk, and, removing her hood of home-embroidered cloth, a veil of white fell to her train. The dingy light from the lamps of whale-oil gathered, like poor folks' children's marvelling eyes, around the pair of diamonds in her delicately moulded, but alert and generous ears. Her fine gold watch-chain, twice dependent from her neck, disappeared in the snowy mould of her bosom, on whose heaving drift swam a magnolia-bud and blossom, each with a leaf. Her father's picture, in a careful miniature set in pearls, lay higher on her breast, fastened by a pearl necklace. Her hands were covered with white gloves, and her arms were without ornament. Her hair, dropping in dark ringlets around her forehead and temples, was combed upward farther back, and then gathered around a pearl comb in high braids, and the plentiful loops drooped to her shoulder.

Milburn glanced at the treasures of her peerless bodily charms, never till now revealed to his sight, and their splendor almost made him afraid.

Never had he been at a theatre, a ball, or anywhere from which he could have foreseen a swan-like neck and bosom sculptured like these, and arms as white as the limbs of the silver-maple, and warmed with bridal-life and modesty.