els safe to make his will known.

"I should like to know what right you have to order what I shall or
shall not do?" Rosa protests, half angry, half laughing. "Why, you talk
like a grown man--like a husband. How dare you?"

Dick pauses confused, and looks guiltily about at this.

"Ah, if you put it that way I have no right except this: My whole heart
is yours. You know that. You may not have given me all yours."
(Protesting shrug from Rosa's shoulders.) "Well, all the same; if my
heart is all your own you have a duty in the case. You ought to spare
your own property from pain." (Rosa laughs softly.) "Of course you are
right. You are always right. How could such a beautiful being be wrong!"
The artful rogue slips his arm about her waist at this, and, after a
feeble struggle, he is permitted to hold this outwork unprotested.

"And, Rosa, if I speak like a man, it is because I am a man. Wasn't it
the part of maids in the old times to inspire the arm of their
sweethearts; to make them constant in danger, brave in battle, and
patient in defeat? Are you less than any of the damsels we read of in
chivalry? Am I not a man when I look in your dear eyes and see nothing
worldlier than love, nothing earthlier than truth there?"

"What a blarney you are! I must really get Vint to send you away, or he
will have a Yankee brother-in-law."

"And the Perleys will have a rebel at the head of the house."

Now, this silly prattle had been carried on in the arbor near the
library, and Wesley, sitting under the curtain, had heard every word of
it. Neither the words nor the unmistakable sounds that lips meeting lips
make, which followed, served to soothe his angry discontent. This was
early on the great Davis gala day, and thereafter he disappeared from
the scene. He made one of the party to Williamsburg, and, though
distraught in the conversation, was keenly alert to all he saw.

Rallied upon his reticence, he had snubbed Kate and turned disdainfully
from Jack's polite proffers to guide him through the review. He had
studied Davis all through the manoeuvres with a furtive, fascinated
attention, which Mrs. Atterbury remarked with complacency, attributing
it to awe. At the dinner-table, seated between Kate and Merry, he had
never taken his eye from the chief of the Confederacy. Twice the
President, courteously addressing him, he had blushed guiltily and
dropped his gaze. Before the dinner was half over he pleaded a severe
headache, and,