“Ah! friends, we are teaching each other how to die—­let us not forget that,” Mrs. Gannat murmured, gently, and there was a sudden hush in the exchange of vivacities.  Before the strain could he renewed, Mrs. Atterbury entered hastily, crying: 

“The gentlemen are all distracted.  We are going to have an old-time minuet, such as my mother used to dance with Justice Marshall and Tom Mayo.  The President is going to lead with Mistress Wendolph, and all the rest of you are assigned, by command of the Executive.”

“Humph! a military despotism?” asked Mrs. Renfrew, a young bride of the Executive Mansion, whose husband was confidential adviser of the President.  “I don’t think I shall obey.  I shall show the honesty of my rebel blood by selecting my own partner, unless some one asks me very humbly.”

“Shall I go on my knees, Mrs. Renfrew?—­I know no humbler attitude,” Jack said, hastily presenting himself.

“Oh, yes, sir; there is something humbler than the knees.”

“Yes?  What, pray?”

“Repentance.  Deny your name; no longer be a Montague—­that is, a Yankee.  Give me the hand of a rebel.  Then I shall believe you.”

“I am a rebel.”

“Ah! you have been converted?”

“I never was perverted.”

“You have been with us all the time?”

“I have been here a long time!”

“And you are a rebel.  Oh, I must tell Mr. Davis!”

“He knows it, I think.”

“Oh, no, he can not; for it was only a few moments since that he said to Mrs. Atterbury that the son of Senator Sprague, the friend of Calhoun and the comrade of Hayne, should be in the ranks of the young nobility upholding our sacred cause.”

“I am, however, a rebel—­a rebel to all these fascinations I see about me, a rebel to your beauty, a rebel to all you desire.”

“Pah! you odious Yankee; I felt certain that you had not come to your senses.”

“I don’t think I ever lost them—­though I never had enough to make such a spirit as yours lament their loss.”  The rest of the ladies had passed out; and, as this repartee went on.  Jack led his petulant companion into the large drawing-room, where he instantly recognized the President with Mrs. Wendolph on his arm.  He towered above the mass of the dancers, eying the admiring groups with attentive scrutiny.  He was in evening dress, but, unlike the larger number of the eminent partisans in the rooms, had no insignia, military or otherwise, to denote exalted rank.

As the President was to lead off, to keep up the character of a court minuet, the middle of the large room was left uncrowded.  The music began what Jack thought at first was a funeral march, but with the first bars the tall, slender figure of the President bent almost double, while the lady seemed fairly seated on the floor, she bent down and back so far.  She had adjusted a prodigious silken train, which swept and swirled in many bewildering folds as she slowly turned,