26
RECOLLECTIONS OF A CONFEDERATE GENERAL BY JUBAL DE BROOKE
Liverpool, England, December, 1863.
Sarah McConville graced me with a warm smile and fond embrace as I was shown into the drawing room. She was dressed as if for some lavish occasion, though I knew from a previous conversation that she had no such commitments that day.
“What do you think, Jubal?” She stepped back, enabling me to see the dress of luxuriant silk.
“You look very lovely, my dear,” I murmured, preferring not to imagine how much she’d paid for that mountain of frothy fabric while her family’s business gathered pace in the general direction of hell. Yet I couldn’t help but reflect that this profligacy was so very unlike the woman I’d come so to admire.
“It arrived this very morning, direct from Tipston’s in Regent
