"I am sorry to say," he continued, "that most of the ladies of New Orleans seem to regard us with a perfect hatred. When I pass them in the street they draw themselves aside in such a way that I look in the first attainable mirror to see if I have the small-pox. They are dreadfully sensitive to the presence of Yankees. They remind me of the catarrhal gentleman who sneezed every time an ice-cart drove by his house. Seriously they abuse us. I was dreadfully set down by a couple of women in black this morning. They entered a street car in which I was. There were several citizens present, but not one of them offered to give up his place. I rose and offered them mine. They no more took it than if they knew that I had scalped all their relatives. They surveyed me from head to foot with a lofty scorn which made them seem fifty feet high and fifty years old to my terrified optics. They hissed out, 'We accept nothing from Yankees,' and remained standing. The hiss would have done honor to Rachel or to the geese who saved Rome."
The two listeners laughed and exchanged a glance of comprehension.
"Offer them your hand and heart, and see if they won't accept something from a Yankee," said Mrs. Larue.
Colburne looked a trifle disconcerted, and because he did so Miss Ravenel blushed. In both these young persons there was a susceptibility, a promptness to take alarm with regard to hymenial subjects which indicated at least that they considered themselves old enough to marry each other or somebody, whether the event would ever happen or not.
"I suppose Miss Ravenel thinks I was served perfectly right," observed Colburne. "If I see her standing in a street car and offer her my seat, I suppose she will say something crushing."
He preferred, you see, to talk apropos of Miss Ravenel, rather than of Mrs. Larue or the Langdons.
"Please don't fail to try me," observed Lillie. "I hate to stand up unless it is to dance."
As Colburne had not been permitted to learn dancing in his younger days, and had felt ashamed to undertake it in what seemed to him his present fullness of years, he had nothing to say on the new idea suggested. The speech even made him feel a little uneasy: it sounded like an implication that Miss Ravenel preferred men who danced to men who did not: so fastidiously jealous and sensitive are people who are ever so slightly in love.
In this wandering and superficial way the conversation rippled along for nearly an hour. Colburne had been nonplussed from the beginning by not finding his young lady alone, and not being able therefore to say to her at least a few of the affecting things which were in the bottom of his heart. He had arrived at the house full of pleasant emotion, believing that he should certainly overflow with warm expressions of friendship if he did not absolutely pour forth a torrent of passionate affection. Mrs. Larue had dropped among his agreeable bubbles of expectation like a piece of ice into a goblet of champagne, taking the life and effervescence out of the generous fluid. He was occupied, not so much in talking or listening, as in cogitating how he could bring the conversation into congeniality with his own feelings. By the way, if he had found Miss Ravenel alone, I doubt whether he would have dared say any thing to her of a startling nature. He over-estimated her and was afraid of her; he under-estimated himself and was too modest.
Lillie had repeatedly wondered to herself why her father did not come. At last she looked at her watch and exclaimed with anxious astonishment, "Half past eight! Why, Victorine, where can papa be?"