sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons had gone away to the cotton and sugar and rice plantations of the South, to new farm lands of the West, to the professions in cities of the North.  The mirrors within held long vistas of wavering forms and vanishing faces; against the walls of the rooms had beaten unremembered tides of strong and of gentle voices.  In the parlors what scenes of lights and music, sheen of satins, flashing of gems; in the dining rooms what feastings as in hale England, with all the robust humors of the warm land, of the warm heart.

Near the middle of the block and shaded by forest trees, stood with its heirlooms and treasures the home of Isabel’s grandmother.  Known to be heiress to this though rich in her own right was Isabel herself, that grandmother’s idol, the only one of its beautiful women remaining yet to be married; and to celebrate with magnificence in this house Isabel’s marriage to Rowan Meredith had long been planned by the grandmother as the last scene of her own splendid social drama:  having achieved that, she felt she should be willing to retire from the stage—­and to play only behind the curtain.

It was the middle of the afternoon of the same Sunday.  In the parlors extending along the eastern side of the house there was a single sound:  the audible but healthful breathing of a sleeper lying on a sofa in the coolest corner.  It was Isabel’s grandmother nearing the end of her customary nap.

Sometimes there are households in which two members suggest the single canvas of a mediaeval painter, depicting scenes that represent a higher and a lower world:  above may be peaks, clouds, sublimity, the Transfiguration; underneath, the pursuits and passions of local worldly life—­some story of loaves and fishes and of a being possessed by a devil.  Isabel and her grandmother were related as parts of some such painting:  the grandmother was the bottom of the canvas.

In a little while she awoke and uncoiling her figure, rolled softly over on her back and stretched like some drowsy feline of the jungle; then sitting up with lithe grace she looked down at the print of her head on the pillow and deftly smoothed it out.  The action was characteristic:  she was careful to hide the traces of her behavior, and the habit was so strong that it extended to things innocent as slumber.  Letting her hands drop to the sofa, she yawned and shook her head from side to side with that short laugh by which we express amusement at our own comfort and well-being.

Beside the sofa, toe by toe and heel by heel, sat her slippers—­the pads of this leopardess of the parlors.  She peered over and worked her nimble feet into these.  On a little table at the end of the sofa lay her glasses, her fan, and a small bell.  She passed her fingers along her temples in search of small disorders in the scant tufts of her hair, put on her glasses, and took the fan.  Then she glided across the room to one of the front windows, sat down and raised the blind a few inches in order to peep out:  so the well-fed, well-fanged leopardess with lowered head gazes idly through her green leaves.