The Atterbury house was the gayest in Richmond.  Mrs. Atterbury, though the mother of a son in the army and a daughter with a coterie of her own in society, insisted on maintaining the leadership she had long held among the social forces of the capital.  “All Richmond,” and that meant a good deal in a city whose women had been adored for beauty and wit on two continents, received Mrs. Atterbury’s bidding to her drawing-room with proud alacrity.  Never had her “teas,” her musicales, her receptions, and fetes been merrier or more convivial than during this memorable autumn that Jack and Olympia passed as prisoners of war.  It was generally believed that the brother and sister were occult agents of the Federal power, negotiating with the Davis Cabinet, and Jack’s whimsical sobriety of speech and manner, contrasting with his former high animal spirits, carried out the notion of his being a secret ambassador.

It was at a reception given to the Cabinet by Mrs. Atterbury that the rumor of this accredited function came to Jack’s ears.  “All Richmond” was among the guests.  Olympia, in spite of her abhorrence of the cause, couldn’t resist a glow of sympathetic admiration of the women who, in dress, in speech, in tact, in all the artifices which make feminine diplomacy so potent an agency in statecraft, bent every faculty to inspire confidence in the new Administration.  Mrs. Davis herself was not the least of the factors that made the President’s policy the creed of the land.  There was no elaboration of costume—­no obtrusive jewels.  The most richly dressed dame in the company was a Madame Gannat, the deity of the most charming drawing-room at the capital.  At her house society was always sure to meet the European noblemen traveling in the country, the quasi official agents of France, England, and Austria, accredited to the new Confederacy, the generals of the Southern armies on leave in the city, and the political leaders able to snatch an evening’s relaxation.  For some reason this potential personage let Olympia and Jack see that she was deeply interested in them.  She took the young man’s arm late in the evening, and whispering, “Find a place where we can have a little talk,” accompanied him to a small apartment joining a conservatory, where Mrs. Atterbury transacted business with her agents.

“You must take down a book, so that, in case the curious remark us, our tete-a-tete may not be regarded as conspiracy.”

“No one would be apt to associate you with such a thing,” Jack said, vaguely.

“I don’t know.  Like all conspiracies, this Confederate comedy is suspicious.”

“Comedy, Mrs. Gannat?  Why, I never saw people so earnest!  I can’t imagine the surroundings of Cromwell more methodic.”