Before the Dawn: A Story of the Fall of Richmond

by Joseph A. Altsheler

His voice had all the accent of sincerity and Helen looked up at him, thanking him silently with her eyes.

"Then you like General Wood," she said.

"I am proud to have him as a friend and I should dislike very much to have him as an enemy."

Richmond in its best garb and with its bravest face was now arriving fast, and Prescott drifted with some of his friends into one of the smaller parlours. When he returned to the larger room it was crowded, and many voices mingled there. But all noise ceased suddenly and then in the hush some one said: "There she comes!" Prescott knew who was meant and his anger hardened in him.

Miss Catherwood was looking unusually well, and even those who had dubbed her "The Beautiful Yankee" added another superlative adjective. A spot of bright red burned in either cheek and she held her head very high. "How haughty she is!" Prescott heard some one say. Her height, her figure, her look lent colour to the comment.

Her glance met Prescott's and she bowed to him, as to any other man whom she knew, and then with the Secretary beside her, obviously proud of the lady with whom he had come, she received the compliments of her host.

Lucia Catherwood did not seem to be conscious that everybody was looking at her, yet she knew it well and realized that the gaze was a singular mixture of curiosity, like and dislike. It could not well be otherwise, where there was so much beauty to inspire admiration or jealousy and where there were sentiments known to be different from those of all the others present. A mystery as tantalizing as it was seductive, together with a faint touch of scandal which some had contrived to blow upon her name, though not enough really to injure her as yet, sufficed to give a spice to the conversation when she was its subject.

The President engaged her in talk for a few minutes. He himself, clad in a grayish-brown suit of foreign manufacture, was looking thin and old, the slight stoop in his shoulders showing perceptibly. But he brightened up with Southern gallantry as he talked to Miss Catherwood. He seemed to find an attraction not only in her beauty and dignity, but in her opinions as well and the ease with which she expressed them. He held her longer than any other guest, and Mr. Sefton was the third of three, facile, smiling, explaining how they wished to make a convert of Miss Catherwood and yet expected to do so. Here in Richmond, surrounded by truth and with her eyes open to it, she must soon see the error of her ways; he, James Sefton, would vouch for it.

"I have no doubt, Mr. Sefton, that you will contribute to that end," said the President.

She was the centre of a group presently, and the group included the Secretary, Redfield, Garvin and two or three Europeans then visiting in Richmond. Prescott, afar in a corner of the room, watched her covertly. She was animated by some unusual spirit and her eyes were brilliant; her speech, too, was scintillating. The little circle sparkled with laughter and jest. They undertook to taunt her, though with good humour, on her Northern sympathies, and she replied in like vein, meeting all their arguments and predicting the fall of Richmond.