“That is natural enough; but let him win you, if he can, like a Southern gentleman.  Lieutenant Whately, I order you to your duty.  Mr. Baron, if you wish to send your ladies away and go with them, I will furnish an escort.  Any Southern home beyond the field of hostilities will be open to you.  Acquaint me with your decision,” and he bowed and strode away.

Even the most prejudiced and blind are compelled at times by an unhesitating and impartial opinion to see things somewhat in their true light.  Long-cherished purposes and habits of thought in regard to Miss Lou, then panic, and strong emotions mixed with good and evil, had brought the girl’s relatives into their present false relations to her.  After the scene at the attempted wedding, Mrs. Whately would have returned to safe and proper ground, hoping still to win by kindness and coaxing.  She had learned that Miss Lou was not that kind of girl, who more or less reluctantly could be urged into marriage and then make the best of it as a matter of course.  This fact only made her the more eager for the union, because by means of it she hoped to secure a balance-wheel for her son.  But the blind, obstinate persistence on the part of the Barons in their habitual attitude toward their niece, and now her son’s action, had placed them all in a most humiliating light.  Even Mr. Baron, who had always been so infallible in his autocratic ways and beliefs, knew not how to answer the elderly major.  Whately himself, in a revulsion of feeling common to his nature, felt that his cousin had been right, and that a miserable space for repentance was before him, not so much for the wrong he had purposed, as for the woful unwisdom of his tactics and their ignominious failure.  His training as a soldier led him to obey without a word.

Miss Lou was magnanimous in her victory.  “Cousin Madison,” she said earnestly, “why don’t you end this wicked nonsense and act like a cousin?  As such I have no ill-will toward you, but I think you and uncle must now see I’ll stop at nothing that will keep me from becoming your wife.  There’s no use of trying to make me think I’m wrong in my feelings, for I now believe every true man would side with me.  Be my cousin and friend and I will give you my hand here and now in goodwill.”

But his anger was too strong to permit any such sensible action, and he rushed away without a word.

“Madison!” called his mother.  “Oh, I’m just overwhelmed,” and she covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.

“Well,” said Mr. Baron in a sort of dreary apathy, “do you and Louise wish to go away under an escort furnished by the major?”

“No,” cried Mrs. Whately, “I would accept my fate rather than favor at his hands.  If I could only explain to him more fully—­yet how can I?  My son, with all his faults, is all I have to live for.  I shall stay near him while I can, for he will be reckless to-day.  My heart is just breaking with forebodings.  Oh, why couldn’t you, with your gray hairs, have shown a little wisdom in helping me restrain him?”