“Who was that, Lettice?” Rhoda asked.
“I don’t know. Oh, Rhoda, I was so excited that I spoke to him without realizing that he was a stranger. I am afraid it was a dreadful thing to do. Don’t tell Aunt Martha nor Mrs. Hamilton.”
“No, I will not; but you must not do such things. I shall have to keep a strict eye upon you.”
“I am afraid you will,” replied Lettice, meekly. However, after the supper, when the manager of the ball proposed as a toast, “Decatur and the officers and the crew of the frigate United States,” and after the most exciting evening she had ever known, as Lettice was about to leave the ball-room, she turned for one last, parting look, and from across the room came a smile of recognition from the strange young gentleman, and though Lettice was following Rhoda most decorously, she could not resist an answering smile as she turned away.
CHAPTER VII.
Captured.
By this time the ports and harbors of the Chesapeake were declared in a state of blockade, and after her visit in Washington was over, Lettice returned to Baltimore to hear that little fleets of British ships were appearing off the coast.
“You are much safer here than at home,” Mrs. Tom Hopkins said; “for if the British should come up the bay, there is no knowing what will happen. Think how they have burned and plundered lower Virginia. We may yet see our homes in the country burned over our heads.”
“Do you really think so, Aunt Martha?” Lettice asked apprehensively.
“One cannot tell,” Mrs. Hopkins returned, shaking her head. “Alas, this foolish war! It has taken my husband from me and may rob me of my home.”