“Oh, can it be right?” cried the girl, wringing her hands.

“One question will settle all:  Can you return my love?”

With that query light came into her mind as if from heaven.  She saw that such love as theirs was the supreme motive, the supreme obligation.

She rose and fixed her lovely, tear-gemmed eyes upon him searchingly as she asked, “Would you wed me, a beggar, dowered only with sorrow and bitter memories?”

“I will wed you, Suwanee Barkdale, or no one.”

“There,” she said, with a wan smile, holding out her hand; “the North has conquered again.”

“Suwanee,” he said, gravely and gently, as he caressed the head bowed upon his breast, “let us begin right.  For us two there is no North or South.  We are one for time, and I trust for eternity.  But do not think me so narrow and unreasonable as to expect that you should think as I do on many questions.  Still more, never imagine that I shall chide you, even in my thoughts, for love of your kindred and people, or the belief that they honestly and heroically did what seemed to them their duty.  When you thought yourself such a hopeless little sinner, and I discovered you to be a saint, did I not admit that your patriotic impulses were as sincere as my own?  As it has often been in the past, time will settle all questions between your people and ours, and time and a better knowledge of each other will heal our mutual wounds.  I wish to remove fear and distrust of the immediate future from your mind, however.  I must take you to a Northern home, where I can work for you in my profession, but you can be your own true self there,—­just what you were when you first won my honor and esteem.  The memory of your brave father and brothers shall be sacred to me as well as to you.  I shall expect you to change your feelings and opinions under no other compulsion than that of your own reason and conscience.  Shall you fear to go with me now?  I will do everything that you can ask if you will only bless me with your love.”

“I never dreamed before that it could be so sweet to bless an enemy,” she said, with a gleam of her old mirthfulness, “and I have dreamed about it.  O Fenton, I loved you unsought, and the truth nearly killed me at first, but I came at last to be a little proud of it.  You were so brave, yet considerate, so fair and generous towards us, that you banished my prejudices, and you won my heart by believing there was some good in it after all.”

A white shock of wool surmounting a wrinkled, ebon visage appeared at the door, and the old cook said, “Missy S’wanee, dere’s nuffin’ in de house for supper but a little cawn-meal.  Oh, bress de Lawd! if dere ain’t Cap’n Lane!”

“Give us a hoe-cake, then,” cried Lane, shaking the old woman’s hand.  “I’d rather sup with your mistress to-night on corn-meal than sit down to the grandest banquet you have ever prepared in the past.  In the morning I’ll forage for breakfast.”