“No.  I don’t think I know what love is.  When a mere girl I had a foolish little flame that went out with the first breath of ridicule.  Since that time I have enjoyed gentlemen’s society as naturally as any other girl of our set, perhaps more keenly.  Their talk and ways are so different from those of girls!  Then my love of power came in, you see.  The other girls were always talking about their friends and followers, and it was my pride to surpass them all.  I liked one better than another, of course, but was always as ready for a new conquest as that old fool, ‘Alexander the Little,’ who ran over the world and especially himself.  What do you think, papa?  Shall I ever see one who will make all the others appear as nothing?  Or, would it be nobler to devote myself to a true, fine man, like Mr. Lane, no matter how I felt?”

“God forbid!  You had better stay at your mother’s side till you are as old and wrinkled as Time himself.”

“I am honestly glad to hear you say so.  But what am I to do?  Sooner or later I shall have to refuse Mr. Lane, and others too.”

“Refuse them, then.  He would be less than a man who would ask a girl to sacrifice herself for him.  No, my dear, the most inalienable right of your womanhood is to love freely and give yourself where you love.  This right is one of the issues of this war,—­that the poorest woman in this land may choose her own mate.  Slavery is the corner-stone of the Confederacy, wherein millions of women can be given according to the will of masters.  Should the South triumph, phases of the Old-World despotism would creep in with certainly, and in the end we should have alliances, not marriages, as is the case so generally abroad.  Now if a white American girl does not make her own choice she is a weak fool.  The law and public sentiment protect her.  If she will not choose wisely, she must suffer the consequences, and only under the impulse of love can a true choice be made.  A girl must be sadly deficient in sense if she loves a weak, bad, disreputable man, or a vulgar, ignorant one.  Such mesalliances are more in seeming than in reality, for the girl herself is usually near in nature to what she chooses.  There are few things that I would more earnestly guard you against than a loveless marriage.  You would probably miss the sweetest happiness of life, and you would scarcely escape one of its worst miseries.”

“That settles it, then.  I am going to choose for myself,—­to stay with you and mamma, and to continue sending you my bills indefinitely.”

“They will be love letters, now.”

“Very dear ones, you will think sometimes.  But truly, papa, you must not let me spend more than you can afford.  You should be frank on this point also, when you know I do not wish to be inconsiderate.  The question still remains, What am I to do with Mr. Lane?”