“Elfrida!” he exclaimed, again advancing toward her. “If you suppose that I am going to submit to the humiliation you have put upon me, you are quite mistaken! I insist——”
At that moment a servant, summoned by Elfie’s bell, entered the room, and Albert broke off in his speech.
“Go!” said Elfrida, in a low, stern voice, as she still pointed to the door. “Go! there is no time to be lost, either by you or me! If you do not obey me at once, I will summon Dr. Rosenthal and his two brothers, who are in the house, and have you arrested as you stand!”
“You are a young demon!” hissed Albert Goldsborough, grinding his teeth, as he flung himself out of the room.
“Attend that gentleman to the door, Catherine; and then step round to the livery stable and tell them that I shall want a carriage to be here by two o’clock,” said Elfie.
The girl bowed her head and went out of the room, closing the door after her.
And little Elfie, left alone, paced up and down the library floor, as a chafed young lioness might pace her den.
“It is all over between us now,” she sobbed; “all over between us forever and ever! And, oh! I did love him! I did love him so dearly! And with all his faults he did love me so truly! And he confided all his plans to me so trustingly. And now I must turn on him and denounce him and expose him to capture and death! or else I must hide his secrets in my bosom and let him go on planning the capture of Washington and the destruction of the Union. Oh, my goodness! was ever a poor girl in such a fix as I am!” added Elfie, as she left the library with the intention of seeking her own room, to prepare for her visit to the President.
For in all the ebbs and flows of contending passions Elfie was as true to the country as is a politician to his own interests.
“I never can trust myself to tell the story. I should become agitated and talk slang perhaps, and get myself and my information discredited. Take the city by assault! Turn the streets into rivers of blood and the houses into smoking ruins! Capture the President-elect and plant the Confederate flag on the dome of the capitol! Heaven and Earth and the other Place! what a plot!” exclaimed Elfie, as she sat down to her writing desk and began to write a short, condensed account of the plan divulged to her by Albert Goldsborough.