On subsequent occasions, and in more extended conversation with the Colonel, it was retailed to him in full.
Nannie Hedden, or Mrs.John Alexander Fleming, or Mrs.Ira George Carter, or Hattie Starr, was by birth a descendant of a long line of Virginia and Kentucky Heddens and Colters, related in a definite or vague way to half the aristocracy of four or five of the surrounding states.

Now, although still a woman of brilliant parts, she was the keeper of a select house of assignation in this meager city of perhaps two hundred thousand population.

How had it happened?
How could it possibly have come about?
She had been in her day a reigning beauty.
She had been born to money and had married money.

Her first husband, John Alexander Fleming, who had inherited wealth, tastes, privileges, and vices from a long line of slave-holding, tobacco-growing Flemings, was a charming man of the Kentucky-Virginia society type.

He had been trained in the law with a view to entering the diplomatic service, but, being an idler by nature, had never done so.