A flurry of feet on the stairs made him turn. A young woman, fair haired, dressed in white, and excited, came running down the final flight, then checked on the bottom stair with her hand resting on the white-painted newel post. She solemnly inspected Starbuck. “You’re Nate Starbuck?” she finally asked.

“Indeed, ma’am.” He offered her a small, awkward bow.

“Don’t ’ma’am’ me, I’m Anna.” She stepped down onto the hall floor. She was small, scarce more than five feet tall, with a pale, waif-like face that was so anxiously wan that Starbuck, if he had not known her to be one of Virginia’s wealthiest daughters, might have thought her an orphan.

Anna’s face was familiar to Starbuck from the portrait that hung in the Richmond town house, but however accurately the picture had caught her narrow head and diffident smile, the painter had somehow missed the essence of the girl, and that essence, Starbuck decided, was oddly pitiable. Anna, despite her prettiness, looked childishly nervous, almost terrified, as if she expected the world to mock her and cuff her and discard her as worthless. That look of extraordinary timidity was not helped by the hint of a strabismus in her left eye, though the squint, if it existed at all, was very slight. “I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said, “because I was looking for an excuse not to attend church, and now I can talk to you.”

“You received the petticoats?” Starbuck asked.

“Petticoats?” Anna paused, frowning, as if the word were unfamiliar to her.

“I brought you the petticoats you wanted,” Starbuck explained, feeling as though he was speaking to a rather stupid child.

Anna shook her head. “The petticoats were for Father, Mister Starbuck, not me, though why he should want them, I don’t know. Maybe he thinks the supply will be constricted by war? Mother says we must stock up on medicines because of the war. She’s ordered a hundredweight of camphor, and the Lord knows how much niter paper and hartshorn too. Is the sun very hot?”

“No.”

“I cannot go into too fierce a sunlight, you see, in case I burn. But you say it isn’t fierce?” She asked the question very earnestly.

“It isn’t, no.”

“Then shall we go for a walk? Would you like that?” She crossed the hall and slipped a hand under Starbuck’s arm and tugged him toward the wide front door. The impetuous gesture was strangely intimate for such a timid girl, yet Starbuck suspected it was a pathetic appeal for companionship. “I’ve been so wanting to meet you,” Anna said. “Weren’t you supposed to come here yesterday?”