"Beautifully read, Hulda! I never go to such places as theatres, but you
might be, I should say, an actress. Don't think of it, however! Very
unconservative profession! I take great pride in you, my lovely girl;
suppose I take you home with me!"

He walked to her stool, and laid his warm hand on her neck, standing
behind her; she did not move nor change color.

"Something has happened to me, Colonel McLane," Hulda spoke, clear as a
bell out of a prison, "to make even Johnson's Cross Roads good and
happy. Can you guess what it is?"

She bent her head back, and looked up fearlessly at him, as if he were
the negro now.

"Not religious ecstasy?" he said. "Not camp-meeting or revival
conversion, I hope. That's vile."

"No, Colonel. It is knowing a pure young man, whose love for me is
natural and unselfish."

"Great God!" spoke McLane, removing his hand. "Not some kidnapper?"

"No," Hulda said, "no slave-dealer of any kind. They cannot make him so.
He is perfectly conservative, Colonel, as to that vileness. I believe he
is a gentleman, too."

"You must have great experience in that article," he sneered, looking
angry at her.

"I have seen you and my lover; you have the best clothes, and profess
more. He has a nature that your opportunities would bring real
refinement from. He respects me, wretched as I am; I read it in his
eyes. You are looking for a way to degrade me in my own feelings, yet to
deceive me. Can you be a gentleman?"

She was serene as if she had said nothing, though she rose up, and stood
at one side of the fireplace, opposite him; between them was a print of
General Jackson riding over the British.

In that moment Allan McLane felt that the girl was cheap at her
grandmother's figure.

He had always conceived her a flexible, peculiar child; in a few minutes
she had grown years, and become a rare and nearly stately woman, not now
to be moulded, but to be tempted with large, worldly propositions.

"May I ask who this lover is that I am so much beneath, Hulda--I, who
have taught you the accomplishments you chastise me with? I found you
sand; I made you crystal."

He drew out a large pongee handkerchief, and really dropped some tears
into it. She continued, cool and unmoved:

"My love is Levin Dennis, from Princess Anne. I am not afraid to tell
it."

"Why?"

"Because I want his danger and mine to be fully known to him, and make
him a man."

The Colonel folded his pongee, and came again to