“Oh, well, mother, the milk is spilled.  If possible, let the whole affair be kept from her knowledge.”

“Yes, I suppose that will be the best way.  If she hears about it, we must try to explain by the usages of war.  Now, Madison, you are cool.  Let experience be your teacher, for you must face the truth.  You must either give her up—­”

“I’ll never give her up.”

“Then, as Major Brockton said, you must win her like a Southern gentleman.  Her spirit is as high as yours.  You can’t continue to speak to her as you did last night and this morning.  Try to realize the facts.  In the seclusion of her bringing up, Louise has learned nothing of the conventionalities of society which might incline her toward a good match on general principles.  So far from this, the many old-fashioned romances she has read have made her feel that she must and will have her romance.  If you can make Louise feel that you love her so well as to become her gallant suitor, circumstances may soon give you great advantages.  She may be cold and indifferent for a time, but like all passionate high-strung natures, present impulses against may turn just as strongly for you.  At least, you have not to contend with that most fatal of all attitudes—­ indifference.  A great change in you will be a flattering tribute to her power to which no girl would be indifferent.  I must tell you now once for all that I will not again assist in any high-handed measures against Louise.  Not only the futility of such action, but my own dignity and sense of right, forbid it.  I did not understand her at first.  Now that I do, I am all the more eager to call her daughter; but I wish her to feel toward me as she should in such a relation.  Yesterday, when I apologized and told her that I meant to treat her with kindness and fairness, she kissed me like the warm-hearted girl she is.  I will help you win her as a man should win his wife; I will not be dragged into any more false positions which can end only in humiliation.  I will be your tireless ally in the only way you can succeed, but in no other.”

“Very well, mother, I agree,” said Whately, whose nature it was to react from one extreme to another.

“Ah, now I have hope.  How is your arm?”

“It pains horribly.”

Mrs. Whately went to Miss Lou’s room and said, “Forgive me for keeping you waiting.  Madison is almost beside himself with pain in his arm, and I will be detained a little longer.”

In her immense relief that she was not charged with all she dreaded, Miss Lou had leisure from her fears to feel commiseration for her cousin.  When at last he appeared she said kindly, “I am sorry you are suffering so much.”

“If I thought you really cared I wouldn’t mind the pain,” he replied.  “Cousin Lou, I owe an apology, several, I reckon, but I’ve been so distracted between conflicting feelings, duties and pain, that I scarcely know what I say.”