Stephen, smiling down on her, said nothing.  And poor Anne, in her fear that he had perceived the shade in her meaning, made another unfortunate remark.

“If you were not a—­a Republican—­” she said.

“A Black Republican,” he answered, and laughed at her discomfiture.  “What then?”

Anne was very red.

“I only meant that if you were not a Republican, there would be no meeting to address that night.”

“It does not make any difference to you what my politics are, does it?” he asked, a little earnestly.

“Oh, Stephen!” she exclaimed, in gentle reproof.

“Some people have discarded me,” he said, striving to smile.

She wondered whether he meant Virginia, and whether he cared.  Still further embarrassed, she said something which she regretted immediately.

“Couldn’t you contrive to come?”

He considered.

“I will come, after the meeting, if it is not too late,” he said at length.  “But you must not tell any one.”

He lifted his hat, and hurried on, leaving Anne in a quandary.  She wanted him.  But what was she to say to Virginia?  Virginia was coming on the condition that he was not to be there.  And Anne was scrupulous.

Stephen, too, was almost instantly sorry that he had promised.  The little costumer’s shop (the only one in the city at that time) had been ransacked for the occasion, and nothing was left to fit him.  But when he reached home there was a strong smell of camphor in his mother’s room.  Colonel Brice’s cocked hat and sword and spurs lay on the bed, and presently Hester brought in the blue coat and buff waistcoat from the kitchen, where she had been pressing them.  Stephen must needs yield to his mother’s persuasions and try them on—­they were more than a passable fit.  But there were the breeches and cavalry boots to be thought of, and the ruffled shirt and the powdered wig.  So before tea he hurried down to the costumer’s again, not quite sure that he was not making a fool of himself, and yet at last sufficiently entered into the spirit of the thing.  The coat was mended and freshened.  And when after tea he dressed in the character, his appearance was so striking that his mother could not refrain from some little admiration.  As for Hester, she was in transports.  Stephen was human, and young.  But still the frivolity of it all troubled him.  He had inherited from Colonel Wilton Brice, the Puritan, other things beside clothes.  And he felt in his heart as he walked soberly to the hall that this was no time for fancy dress balls.  All intention of going was banished by the time his turn had come to speak.