The two young Englishmen entered the street and stood watching the scene with interest, leaning against the tall iron railings of the old–fashioned quarter. Pelham and Darrell noticed near them, also leaning against the iron railings, a man of about middle age, with a sort of leonine beauty and handsomely dressed, though far too showily. His fur–lined greatcoat brought out the clean–cut outlines of his clean–shaven face, his iron–gray hair, and straight, narrow brows over eyes of singular eloquence. Both young officers observed him, for it was difficult at any time to look once at James Clavering without looking at him twice.
In the circle of light made by two flashing gas–lamps in the front entrance, suddenly appeared a young girl leaning on the arm of an elderly gentleman. At the same instant the eyes of Pelham and Darrell and Clavering fell upon her, and each thought her the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen—which was, however, a very great mistake. Elizabeth Brandon had, it is true, hair of satin blackness and skin of milky whiteness, and eyes that reminded one of a summer night, so soft, so dark with occasional flashes of starlike brilliancy, and a figure as slight and graceful as a lily–stalk. Other women have as much beauty of feature as Elizabeth Brandon, but she had that which is beauty itself, the power to charm at a glance. She was not really as handsome as her father, General Brandon, on whose arm she leaned, and who carried her party–bag.
[Illustration: “‘OH, PAPA!’ SHE SAID, ‘SAVE MY LITTLE PEARL HEART.’”]
Both Pelham and Darrell saw at a glance that General Brandon was a military man. And Clavering recognized him as the Captain Brandon he had known twenty–five years before at a post in Texas, where Clavering was at the time a sutler. He had heard that, at the breaking out of the Civil War, Captain Brandon, who was a Southern man, had resigned and had become a brigadier–general in the Confederate Army. Since the war, Brandon had disappeared in the great, black gulf that opened where once stood a government which called itself the Confederate States of America. But Clavering gave no thought to this, as under the cover of darkness he surveyed the charming girl who clung to General Brandon’s arm. The two stood directly in front of Pelham and Darrell, who bestowed upon Elizabeth those glances of respectful admiration which is the homage due to beauty.