The girl knew what bitter, intolerable emotions were tearing the heart of the ill-fated secessionist before her, and, in her own gentle heart, pitied him.

“He needn’t be so sure about it,” she said, with indignant spirit.  “I’ll never marry any stranger, unless he’s awful rich—­oh, as rich as anything!”

“Oh, Miss Potts!” roared Montgomery, suddenly, folding-down upon one knee before her, and scratching his nose with a ring upon the hand he sought to kiss, “why will you not bestow upon me the heart so generously disdainful of everything except the most extreme wealth?  Why waste your best years in waiting for proposals from a class of Northern men who occasionally expect that their brides, also, shall have property, when here I offer you the name and hand of a loving Southern gentleman, who only needs the paying off of a few mortgages on his estate in the South to be beyond all immediate danger of starvation?”

Turning her pretty head aside, but unconsciously allowing him to retain her hand, she faintly asked how they were to live?

“Live!” repeated the impetuous lover.  “On love, hash, mutual trust, bread pudding:  anything that’s cheap.  I’ll do the washing and ironing myself.”

“How perfectly ridiculous!” said the orphan, bashfully turning her head still further aside, and bringing one ear-ring to bear strongly upon him.  “You’d never be able to do fluting and pinking in the world.”

“I could do anything, with you by my side!” he retorted, eagerly.  Oh, Miss Potts!—­Flora!—­think how lonely I am.  My sister, as on may have heard, has accepted Gospeler SIMPSON’S proposal, by mail, for her hand, and is already so busy quarrelling with his mother that she is no longer any company for me.  My fate is in your hands; it is in woman’s power to either make or marry the roan who loves her—­”

“Provided, always, that her legal guardian consents,” interrupted the benignant voice of Mr. Dibble, who, unperceived by them, had entered the room in time to finish the sentence.

Springing alertly to an upright position, and coughing excessively, Mr. Pendragon was a shamefaced reproach to his whole sex, while the young lady used the edge of her right foot against a seam of the carpet with that extreme solicitude as to the result which is always so entirely deceiving to those who have hoped to see her show signs of painful embarrassment.

After surveying them in thoughtful silence for a moment, the old lawyer bent over his ward, and hugged and kissed her with an unctuousness justified by his great age and extreme goodness.  It was his fine old way of bestowing an inestimable blessing upon all the plump younger women of his acquaintance, and the benediction was conferred on the slightest pretexts, and impartially, up to a certain age.

“Am I to construe what I have seen and heard, my dear, as equivalent to the conclusion of my guardianship?” he asked, smilingly.