WEDDING RING
383
had located the special circumstances, I had learned the identity of
"She." Mr. Trice, the newspaper said, was survived by
his
widow,
nee Annabelle Puckett, of Washington, D. C.
Shortly after Cass had come to Lexington, Annabelle Trice met
him. Duncan Trice brought him home, for he had received a letter
from Mr. Davis, recommending the brother of
his
good friend and
neighbor, Mr. Gilbert Mastern. (Duncan Trice had come to Lexing–
ton from Southern Kentucky, where his own father had been a friend
oi
Samuel Davis, the father of Jefferson, when Samuel lived at Fair–
view and bred racers.) So Duncan Trice brought the tall boy home,
who was no longer a hobbledehoy, and set him on a sofa and thrust
a glass into his hand and called in his pretty, husky-voiced wife, of
whom he was so proud, to greet the stranger. "When she first en–
tered the room, in which the shades of approaching twilight were
gathering though the hour for the candles to be lit had scarcely come,
I thought that her eyes were black, and the effect was most striking,
her hair being of such a fairness. I noticed, too, how softly she trod
and with a gliding motion which, though she was perhaps of a little
less than moderate stature, gave an impression of regal dignity-
et avertens rosea cervice refulsit
ambrosiaeque comae divinum ve,-tice odorem
spiravere, pedes vestis defluxit ad imos,
et vera incessu patuit dea.
So the Mantuan said, when Venus appeared and the true goddess
was revealed by her gait. She came into the room and was the true
guddess as revealed in her movement, and was, but for Divine Grace
(1f such be granted to a parcel of corruption such as I), my true
damnation. She gave me her hand and spoke with a tingling huskiness
which made me think of rubbing my hand upon a soft deep-piled
doth, like velvet, or upon a fur. It would not have been called a musi–
cal voice such as is generally admired. I know that, but I can only
set down what effect it worked upon my own organs of hearing."
Was she beautiful? Well, Cass set down a very conscientious de–
sciiption of every feature and proportion, a kind of tortured inventory,
;u,
though in the midst of the "darkness and trouble," at the very mo–
ment of his- agony and repudiation, he had to take one last backward
look even at the risk of being turned into the pillar of salt. "Her face
was not large though a little given to fullness. Her mouth was strong
but the lips were red and moist and seemed to be slightly parted or
about to part themselves. The chin was short and firmly moulded.
Her skin was of a great whiteness, it seemed then before the candles
