"Why didn't you tell me this before?" she exclaimed. "Why were you not frank with me, mon ami? I would have gone. I would have worked day and night for you. I would have had such fun! It would have been delicious to humbug those abolitionist Senators. I would have been the ruin of Mr. Sumnaire and Mr. Weelsone. There would have been yet more books dedicated to Sainte Marie Madeleine."
She burst into a laugh at these jolly ideas, and waltzed about the room with a mimicry of love-making in her eyes and gestures.
"But I can not go alone, you perceive; do you not?" she resumed, sitting down by his side and laying one hand caressingly on his shoulder. "I should have no position alone, and there is not the time for me to create one. Moreover, I have paid for my passage to New Orleans in the Mississippi."
"Well, we shall be together," said Carter. "That is my boat. But what a cursed fool I was in not taking you to Washington!"
"Certainly you were, mon ami. It is most regrettable. It is désespérant."
As far as these two were concerned, the voyage south was much like the latter part of the voyage north, except that Carter suffered less from self-reproach, and was generally in higher spirits. He had not money enough left to pay for his meals and wine, but he did not hesitate to borrow a hundred dollars from the widow, and she lent it with her usual amiability.
"You shall have all I can spare," she said. "I only wish to live and dress comme il faut. You are always welcome to what remains."
What could the unfortunate man do but be grateful? Mrs. Larue began to govern him with a mild and insinuating domination; and, strange to say, her empire was not altogether injurious. She corrected him of a number of the bearish ways which he had insensibly acquired by life in the army, and which his wife had not dared to call his attention to, worshipping him too sincerely. She laughed him out of his swearing, and scolded him out of most of his drinking. She mended his stockings, trimmed the frayed ends of his necktie, saw to it that his clothes were brushed; in short, she greatly improved his personal appearance, which had grown somewhat shabby under the influences of travelling and carousing; for the Colonel was one of those innumerable male creatures who always go to seediness as soon as womankind ceases to care for them. With him she had no more need of coquetries and sentimental prattle; and she treated him very much as a wife of five years' standing treats her husband. She was amiable, pains-taking, petting, slightly exacting, slightly critical, moderately chatty, moderately loving. They led a peaceable, domestic sort of life, without much regard to secrecy, without much terror at the continual danger of discovery. They were old sinners enough to feel and behave much like innocent people. Carter's remorse, it must be observed, had arisen entirely from his affection for his wife, and his shame at having proved unworthy of her affectionate confidence, and not at all from any sense of doing an injury to Mrs. Larue, nor from a tenderness of conscience concerning the abstract question of right and wrong. Consequently, after the first humiliation of his fall was a little numbed by time, he could be quite comfortable in spirit.
But his uneasiness awakened at the sight of Lillie, and the pressure of her joyful embrace. The meeting, affectionate as it seemed on both sides, gave him a very miserable kind of happiness. He did not turn his eyes to Mrs. Larue, who stood by with a calm, pleased smile. He was led away in triumph; he was laid on the best sofa and worshipped; he was a king, and a god in the eyes of that pure wife; but he was a very unhappy, and shamefaced deity.
"Oh, what charming letters you wrote!" whispered Lillie. "How good you were to write so often, and to write such sweet things! They were such a comfort to me!"