She was formally introduced to Mr. St. Mark, the gunner whose skill had saved them.  She had seen the quiet man at a distance during the siege, but had never talked with him.

“Say, Fernando, do yez mark how Misther St. Mark stares at Miss Morgianna?” asked Terrence that evening.  “Bad luck to his ill manners, if he wasn’t so ould, I’d think he was in love with her.”

Fernando made no response.  Captain Lane, during the evening, engaged St. Mark in a discussion about General Jackson, who was undergoing a trial by the civil courts of New Orleans for the violation of the civil laws in saving the city.  Captain Lane was loud in his condemnation of the Peace faction, which, not satisfied with having thrown every possible obstacle in the way of the administration in the prosecution of the war, was now ridiculing the manner in which it had terminated.

Fernando and Morgianna, during the course of the evening, found themselves alone, and he ventured to ask: 

“Is Lieutenant Matson in America?”

“I think not,” she answered, in a careless way that astonished him.  He fixed his eyes on the floor for a moment, and then ventured to say: 

“Pardon me, Miss Lane, but as your friend I am interested in your affairs;—­when is it to come off?”

“When is what to come off?” she asked in real surprise.

“Your marriage with Lieutenant Matson.”

She gazed at him a moment in astonishment, and then her old native mischievousness got control, and she laughed outright.  His very earnestness gave the affair an air of ludicrousness.

“I am in earnest, Miss Lane,” said Fernando, seriously.

“So I perceive,” and she still laughed provokingly.

“May I ask if you have not been engaged all along to Lieutenant Matson?”

“No.”

“When was it broken off?”

“It never was made.”

Fernando turned his face away to hide his confusion and said half aloud: 

“Have I been a fool all along?  If it was not the lieutenant, then who in the name of reason was it?” The roguish creature seemed really to enjoy this discomfiture.  Fernando’s cheek had never blanched in battle, but in the presence of this little maiden he was a coward.  After several efforts in which he found the old malady of something rising in his throat returning, he said: 

“But, Morgianna, was he not your lover?”

“No, he was father’s friend; but I could never love him, though I treated him respectfully.”  She was serious now.

“Then, Morgianna, who was it?” he asked impulsively.  She was silent.  He waited but a second or two and went on.  “Some one surely stood in the way of our—­my happiness.  I had hoped that you did not despise me.  I scarce dared to think you loved me, but it was some one,—­who stood in my way?”

Her cheek grew crimson as the rich blood mounted to neck and face, and in a voice scarce audible she answered: