The colonel simply flung up his hands.
"Gossip? My God!"
It was Carolina who rebuked him. Her voice was grave, but her eyes flashed fire.
"Do Southern ladies gossip more than Parisian or London ladies?"
"Fairly hit, colonel!" said Captain Lee. "To answer that truthfully, you must admit that they do not, for nothing can equal the malice of Paris and London drawing-rooms."
"Quite right, captain. No, missy," he answered, "it is only because we expect so much more of Southern ladies that their gossip sounds more malicious by way of contrast."
Carolina smiled, well pleased by the brilliant tact with which he always extricated himself from a dilemma.
When Colonel Yancey had gone, Captain Lee put one arm around Carolina's shoulder, and with the other hand tilted the girl's flowerlike face up to his, with a remark which, if he had made it to his son, would have changed the whole current of the girl's life. He said:
"Ah, little daughter, the colonel is like all the rest of the Southerners. He can see the truth and can spout gloriously about her, but in a money transaction between himself and a Northern man, he would forget it all, and would consider it no more than honest to 'skin the damned Yankee,' to quote his own language."
And with that the subject was dropped.