“How did it happen that she married a Yankee officer?”
“Quite in the approved way of romances. During a battle which took place in the neighborhood, Captain Hooper was wounded and was brought into the house. Cousin Maria’s father was in the Confederate army, so were her two brothers; both brothers were killed, by the way, and that was one reason for her father’s great bitterness of spirit. Cousin Maria, her mother and her old mammy nursed Captain Hooper and in due course of time the young people fell in love with one another, which was a perfectly natural sequel. Well, he went away, Maria’s secretly accepted lover. Later on the invading army burned the house to the ground, which naturally added to old Colonel Daingerfield’s bitterness, as it was the home of his forefathers. Maria, her mother and the old mammy took refuge with a neighbor. The colonel’s rage, distress and despair made him so violent that he could say nothing but evil of those who fought on the other side, and once when he learned that Maria had received a letter from an officer in the Federal army his fury knew no bounds. So, poor Maria felt that it would be useless ever to expect his consent to her marriage with her lover, though she managed to get letters through the lines to him once in a while. After a while when everything they possessed was swept away, and her mother died, she was in despair. Her father was either gloomy, severe and forbidding or in a paroxysm of rage when the future was mentioned, so she decided that she would go to her lover whenever he could plan for their marriage, then a little later on, when his company was encamped near the town where she was staying, he dashed in one night with a couple of horses, and, as she always maintained, literally carried her off prisoner. They were married at once by the chaplain of the regiment and she went to Washington to some friends there to remain till the war was over. She never saw any of her people again.”
“I think that is a most thrilling tale,” said Mary Lee. “I am fairly tingling with excitement, and I am so glad we are going to see the heroine of such a story. Do you believe she will tell us more about it? I should like to hear all the details.”
“Perhaps she will, though it may be that she will not care to talk of it.”
“Did her father never forgive her?” asked Jack, who had been listening.
“I don’t know that. I hope so, though he can scarcely be blamed if he didn’t. She was his only remaining child, and he felt that she had deserted him, her home and the cause, not to mention her relatives.”
“I couldn’t desert my family for any man,” said Jack positively.
“I expect she was awfully homesick,” remarked Jean.
“I’d like to take her something, Aunt Helen,” said Jack.
“What should you like to take her, Jack?”