e, sinking into a chair, and covering his
face with his handkerchief.

"Saved? How saved?" asked Barbara, alarmed.

"But no," exclaimed Dinwiddie, starting up with a very tragic
expression. "Perhaps it was but a transient pow--pow--power you exerted
over him. Barbara, should you meet again, put forth all your attractions
to--to--to bind him as with a sp--sp--spell to keep my fatal secret."

"What secret, father?"

"Hush--sh--sh!" said Dinwiddie, stepping on tiptoe to one door and then
to another, and then looking with a cautious air under the sofa. He
beckoned to his daughter. She drew near. Once more he looked anxiously
around the room, and then whispered, in a hoarse, low tone, in her ear,
these words, "You shall know all in due time."

Little Barbara drew a long breath, and resolved that it should not be
her fault, if the Captain was not captivated. At that moment there was a
ring at the door-bell; and Mrs. Dinwiddie came in from high conference
with a select conclave of fashionable ladies, who yet clung with
pathetic tenacity to the declining fortunes of Slavery and Secession.

III.

For a fortnight matters seemed to go on swimmingly. Dinwiddie had, as he
thought, so managed as to bring the young people repeatedly together
without his wife's having a suspicion of what was in the wind; and when
Captain Penrose called on him at his counting-room and asked whether he
might pay his addresses to Barbara, Dinwiddie whirled round on his
office-stool, jumped down, and gave the young soldier a cordial hug.

"Certainly, my dear boy! Win her. She likes you. I like you. Everybody
likes you. Go ahead."

"It is proper to inform you, Sir," said the Captain, "that my income is
only twelve hundred a year; but"--

"Pshaw! What do I care for your income? There! Go and settle it with
Barbara. You'll find her alone, I think. Mrs. Dinwiddie, for the last
week, has been as busy as--as--we'll not say who--in a gale of wind.
Remember, 'Fortune favors the brave.' I'm obliged to go to Philadelphia
this afternoon. Good bye."

In a transport of delight, the Captain darted from the office, took a
carriage, and drove to Dinwiddie's.

"Yes, Miss Barbara is in. Walk up, Captain."

"What could be more propitious? Poets are not always in the right. Isn't
my love true love, and doesn't it run smooth?"

Wait awhile, my Captain! Perhaps Shakspeare was not so much in error,
after all.

Barbara's eyes plainly spoke her pleasure at see