vely. "He has been
killing our gallant young men, and depriving us of our liberties, and
he's here now to help the negroes lord it over us."

"Oh, now I know what Gabriel intends to do!" exclaimed Nan, but she
refused to satisfy Eugenia's curiosity, much to that young lady's
discomfort. "I must go," said Nan, kissing her friend good-bye. Eugenia
stood watching her until she was out of sight, and wondered why she was
in such a hurry.

Nan had changed greatly in the course of two years, and, in some
directions, not for the better, as some of the older ones thought and
said. They remembered how charming she was in the days when she threw
all conventions to the winds, and was simply a wild, sweet little
rascal, engaged in performing the most unheard-of pranks, and cutting up
the most impossible capers. Until Margaret Gaither and Eugenia Claiborne
came to Shady Dale, Nan had no girl-friends. All the others were either
ages too old or ages too young, or disagreeable, and Nan had to find her
amusements the best way she could.

Margaret Gaither and Eugenia Claiborne had a very subduing effect upon
Nan. They had been brought up with the greatest respect for all the
small formalities and conventions, and the attention they paid to these
really awed Nan. The young ladies were free and unconventional enough
when there was no other eye to mark their movements, but at table, or in
company, they held their heads in a certain way, and they had rules by
which to seat themselves in a chair, or to rise therefrom; they had been
taught how to enter a room, how to bow, and how to walk gracefully, as
was supposed, from one side of a room to the other. Nan tried hard to
learn a few of these conventions, but she never succeeded; she never
could conform to the rules; she always failed to remember them at the
proper time; and it was very fortunate that this was so. The native
grace with which she moved about could never have been imparted by rule;
but there were long moments when her failure to conform weighed upon her
mind, and subdued her.

This was a part of the change that Gabriel found in her. She could no
longer, in justice to the rules of etiquette, seize Gabriel by the
lapels of his coat and give him a good shaking when he happened to
displease her, and she could no longer switch him across the face with
her braided hair--that wonderful tawny hair, so fine, so abundant, so
soft, and so warm-looking. No, indeed! the day for that was ov