"I entreat you, do not rise!" said Mr. Bythewood, with exceeding affability, hastening to prevent that act of politeness on the part of the blind old man.
"Did you not bring my daughter with you?" asked Mr. Villars.
"Your daughter is here, sir;" and he of the handsome whiskers gave Virginia a most captivating bow and smile.
"He means my sister," said Virginia. "She has gone out, and we are feeling somewhat anxious about her." She thought it best to say thus much, in order that, should the visitor perceive any strangeness or abstraction on her part, he might think it was caused by solicitude for the absent Salina.
"Nothing can have happened to her, certainly," remarked Mr. Bythewood, seating himself in an attitude of luxurious ease, approaching almost to indolent recklessness. "We are the most chivalrous people in the world. There is no people, I think, on the face of the globe, among whom the innocent and defenceless are so perfectly secure."
Virginia thought of the hapless victim of the mob in the kitchen yonder, and smiled politely.
"I have no very great fears for her safety," said the old man. "Yet I have felt some anxiety to know the meaning of the noises I heard in the direction of the academy, an hour ago."
Bythewood laughed, and stroked his glossy mustache.
"I don't know, sir. I reckon, however, that the Yankee schoolmaster has been favored with a little demonstration of southern sentiment."
"How! not mobbed?"