"Then you've failed, and things are worse than they were if you hadn't interfered," said Beauregard.
"No, I must try again," said Adjaha. "Piquette's mother must never have brought her to Nashville as a child, so there will be no chance of your ever meeting her at all."
There was a thunderous knocking at the front door. Federal troops who were investing the town at last had reached this house. Adjaha gave Beauregard one sympathetic look from his dark eyes, and slipped quietly from the room, toward the rear of the house.
The knocking sounded again. Beauregard lay in a semi-daze, his blood-encrusted left arm an agony to him. Through the haze over his mind intruded a premonition that bit more deeply than the physical pain: Never to know Piquette?
He clutched her hand to his breast.
"Quette," he whimpered.
"Be still, darling. I won't leave you," she soothed him as a mother soothes her child. Her cool hand caressed his cheek.
United States Senator Beauregard Courtney of Tennessee crossed Canal Street cautiously and plunged into the French Quarter of New Orleans with a swift, military stride.
He had always urged Lucy that they take a trip to New Orleans, but she always had demurred; she said the city reminded her of war and trouble, somehow. Now he had been invited to be the principal speaker at the annual banquet of the Louisiana Bar Association tonight. He had welcomed the opportunity to make the trip, without Lucy.