He, too, was staying with Madame Delaunay, who was a distant relative.
Harry ate Christmas dinner that evening with twenty people, many of types new to him.

It made a deep impression upon him then, and one yet greater afterward, because he beheld the spirit of the Old South in its inmost shrine, Charleston.

It seemed to him in later days that he had looked upon it as it passed.
They sat in a great dining-room upon a floor level with the ground.
The magnolias and live oaks and the shrubs in the garden moved in the gentle wind.

Fresh crisp air came through the windows, opened partly, and brought with it, as Harry thought, an aroma of flowers blooming in the farther south.

He sat with young St.Clair--the two were already old friends--and Madame Delaunay was at the head of the table, looking more like a great lady who was entertaining her friends than the keeper of an inn.
Madame Delaunay wore a flowing white dress that draped itself in folds, and a lace scarf was thrown about her shoulders.