Now, as Arthurlene cleared the dinner plates, Aunt Judith’s narrative had rambled to the day when, in a letter signed by General Longstreet himself, news arrived of Pardon Lightbourne’s death. The boys listened raptly but with divided hearts. It was hard, was in truth impossible, for them to reconcile their admiration for his courage with their repugnance, instilled by their father, for the cause he had died for. Nor could they reconcile their liking for their great-aunt and the knowledge that this small, frail, generous woman once had owned a hundred human beings. And there was one final, distressing contradiction: If their father and the father of their mother had met forty years ago, each would have done his level best to kill the other.

The maid came back from the kitchen and murmured something to her mistress, who asked the boys if they would like ice cream with their peach pie. The vote was unanimous, then Drew wanted to know what language Arthurlene was speaking, because he hadn’t heard her utter a word that sounded like pie or ice cream. It was called Gullah, replied Aunt Judith, and it was spoken by the sea-island Negroes. Though she had little command of it herself, she and Arthurlene had been together so long that she could understand it.

“Your mother was fluent in it when she was a girl,” she added, shaking her head when Arthurlene set a dessert plate in front of her. “The Gullah hymns and lullabies are quite beautiful, quite haunting. There was one Arthurlene sang to Elizabeth after her mother was taken by the consumption. Did she never sing it to you?”

They all three shook their heads.

“I suppose not,” said their great-aunt after a few seconds’ silence. “It’s my feeling that your mother, after she left … Has she told you anything about her life here?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Nathaniel said.

“And she has spoken fondly of me? Truthfully now, if you weren’t earlier today.”

“Sure. About how you taught her to be a lady and to speak French.…”

“French phrases, Nathaniel. Nothing of the grammar, which I frankly don’t know myself. Phrases like enchantez and au fond and comment allez-vous, which do for a lady’s speech what powder and paint do for her face.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Drew, with his characteristic bluntness.

“It is often necessary for a woman to present herself as more beautiful than nature made her, more refined than perhaps she really is. Women are illusionists. Theirs is the deceptiveness that is not necessarily fraudulence, because it makes the world a pleasanter place to live in. Arthurlene, I believe the sun’s gone down. Kindly open the windows and allow the evening air to come in.”

“We’ll give her a hand,” Nathaniel offered, not so much out of an earnest desire to be helpful as an eagerness to cool the steamy room as quickly as possible.