“So much the better,” said Ratcliff; “it will spare my standing the swindle you call professional charges on your books.”
“Don’t be under a misapprehension, my poor friend,” returned Semmes. “I have laid an attachment on your deposits in the Lafayette Bank. They will just satisfy my claim.”
And taking a pinch of snuff the lawyer walked unconcernedly away. “O that I had my revolver here!” thought Ratcliff, with an inward groan.
But here was Madame Josephine. Here was at least one friend left to him. Of her attachment, under any change of fortune, he felt assured. Her own means, not insignificant, might now suffice for the rehabilitation of his affairs. She drew near, her face radiant with the satisfaction she had felt in the recovery of Clara. She drew near, and Ratcliff caught her eye, and rising and putting out his hands, as if for an embrace, murmured, in a confidential whisper, “Josephine, dearest, come to me!”
She frowned indignantly, threw back her arm with one scornful and repelling sweep, and simply ejaculating, “No more!” moved away from him, and took the proffered arm of the trustee of her funds, the venerable Winslow.
The party now passed away from Ratcliff, and out of the two rooms; most of them going down-stairs to the carriages that waited in the street to bear them to the St. Charles Hotel, over whose cupola the Stars and Stripes were gloriously fluttering in the starlight.
Ratcliff found himself alone with the ever-watchful bloodhound. Suddenly a whistle was heard, and Victor started up and trotted down-stairs. Ratcliff rose to quit the apartment. All at once the stalwart negro, lately his slave, in uniform, and bearing a musket, with the old flag, stood before him.
“Follow me,” said the man, with the dignity of a true soldier.
“Where to?”
“To the lock-up, to wait General Butler’s orders.”