At table the company was arranged as follows. At the head sat Mrs. Whitewood, with Dr. Ravenel on her right, and Miss Whitewood on her left. At the foot was the host, flanked on the right by Miss Ravenel and on the left by Lieutenant-Colonel Carter. The two central side places were occupied by young Whitewood and Colburne, the latter being between Miss Whitewood and Miss Ravenel. With a quickness of perception which I suspect he would not have shown had not his heart been interested in the question he immediately decided that Doctor Ravenel was intended to go tête-a-tête with Mrs. Whitewood, and this strange officer with Miss Ravenel, while he was to devote himself to Miss Whitewood. The worrying thought drove every brilliant idea from his head. He could no more talk and be merry than could that hermaphrodite soul whose lean body and cadaverous countenance fronted him on the opposite side of the table. Miss Whitewood, who was nearly as great a student as her brother, was almost as deficient in the powers of speech; she made an effort, first in the direction of the coming Presentation Day, then towards somebody's notes on Cicero, finally upon the weather; at last, with a woman's sympathetic divination, she guessed the cause of Colburne's gloom, and sank into a pitying silence. As for Mrs. Whitewood, amiable woman and excellent housewife, though an invalid, her conversational faculty consisted in listening. Thus nobody talked except the Ravenels, Lieutenant-Colonel Carter, and Professor Whitewood.
Colburne endeavored to conceal his troubled condition by a smile of counterfeit interest in the conversation. Then he grew ashamed of himself, and tearing off his fictitious smirk, substituted a look of stern thought, thereby exhibiting an honest countenance, but not one suitable to the occasion. There was sherry on the table; not because wine-bibbing was a habit of the Whitewoods, inasmuch as the hostess had brought it out of the family medical stores with a painful twinge of conscience; but there it was, in deference to the supposed tastes of the army gentleman and the strangers from the south. Colburne was tempted to rouse himself with a glass of it, but did not, being a pledged member of a temperance society. Instead of this he made a gallant moral effort, and succeeded in talking copiously to the junior Whitewood. But as what he said is of little consequence to our story, let us go back a few moments and learn what it was that had depressed his spirits.
"I am delighted to meet some one from Louisiana, Miss Ravenel," said the Lieutenant-Colonel, after the master of the house had said grace.
"Why? Are you a Louisianian?" asked the young lady with a blush of interest which was the first thing that troubled Colburne.
"Not precisely. I came very near calling myself such at one time, I liked the State and the people so much. I was stationed there for several years."
"Indeed! At New Orleans?"
"Not so fortunate," replied the Lieutenant Colonel with a smile and a slight bow, which was as much as to say that, if he had been stationed there, he might have hoped for the happiness of knowing Miss Ravenel earlier. "I was stationed in the arsenal at Baton Rouge."
"I never was at Baton Rouge; I mean I never visited there. I have passed there repeatedly in going up and down the river, just while the boat made its landings, you know. What a beautiful place it is! I don't mean the buildings, but the situation, the bluffs."
"Precisely. Great relief to get to Baton Rouge and see a hill or two after staying in the lowlands."
"Oh! don't say anything against the lowlands," begged Miss Ravenel.