s of them in the rear garden. So the old lady, whom she had told no
such thing, let Constance and Miranda conduct her there. But Flora
softly detained Anna, and the moment they were alone seized both her
hands. Whereat through all Anna's frame ran despair, crying, "He has
asked her! He has asked her!"

XIX

FLORA ROMANCES

"Dearest," warily exclaimed the Creole beauty, with a sudden excess of
her pretty accent, "I am in a situation perfectly dreadful!"

Anna drew her to a sofa, seeing pictures of her and Hilary together, and
tortured with a belief in their exquisite fitness to be so. "Can I help
you, dear?" she asked, though the question echoed mockingly within her.

"Ah, no, except with advice," said Flora, "only with advice!"

"Ho-o-oh! if I were worthy to advise you it wouldn't flatter me so to be
asked."

"But I muz' ask. 'Tis only with you that I know my secret will be--to
everybody--and forever--at the bed of the ocean. You can anyhow promise
me that."

"Yes, I can anyhow promise you that."

"Then," said Flora, "let me speak whiles--" She dropped her face into
her hands, lifted it again and stared into her listener's eyes so
piteously that through Anna ran another cry--"He has not asked! No girl
alive could look so if he had asked her!"

Flora seemed to nerve herself: "Anna, every dollar we had, every
picayune we could raise, grandma and I, even on our Mobile house and our
few best jewels, is--is--"

"Oh, what--what? Not lost? Not--not stolen?"

"Blown up! Blown up with that poor old man in the powder-mill!"

"Flora, Flora!" was all Anna, in the shame of her rebuked conjectures,
could cry, and all she might have cried had she known the very truth:
That every dollar, picayune, and other resource had disappeared
_gradually_ in the grist-mill of daily need and indulgence, and never
one of them been near the powder-mill, the poor old man or any of his
devices.

"His theories were so convincing," sighed Flora.

"And you felt so pitiful for him," prompted Anna.

"Grandma did; and I was so ambitious to do some great patriotic
service--like yours, you Callenders, in giving those cannon--and--"

"Oh, but you went too far!"

"Ah, if we had only gone no farther!"

"You went farther? How could you?"

"Grandma did. You know, dear, how suddenly Captain Kincaid had to leave
for Mobile--by night?"

"Yes," murmured Anna, with great emphasis in her private mind.

"Well, jus' at the las' he gave