“In short,” said Isabey, rising and standing very erect, “that Mrs. Neville Tremaine is thought to be a spy. Excuse me, but such a suspicion never entered my mind before, nor do I feel able to entertain it now. Who is responsible for this rumor?”
“Everybody,” replied Mrs. Charteris, rising and throwing her hands wide. “It is all over the county. At church yesterday I hear that no one spoke to Angela.”
“That is true, for I was present. And this on a suspicion merely. She a young girl, grown up in this community, known to all of you since her babyhood!”
“My dear Captain Isabey, you seem unacquainted with the tricks of love. Angela probably adores Neville and may consider it her duty to tell him all she knows concerning the movements of the Confederates.”
“Never! Mrs. Neville Tremaine has too nice a sense of honor for that. I hardly think you can realize the seriousness of the charge which is made against her.”
“It is serious enough,” answered Mrs. Charteris in a grave voice.
“And what could she possibly know,” asked Isabey, “that would be of the slightest consequence? How strange are women, after all! Nothing is too gross for them to believe.”
Mrs. Charteris took this slur upon her sex with perfect calmness. She saw that, despite Isabey’s outward composure, he was shaken to the center of his soul. He was the most courteous of men, and his attitude toward women was one of delicate compliment, and these last unguarded words which had escaped from him, and that, too, in the presence of a woman, were significant. Isabey walked up and down the room. Mrs. Charteris remained standing, with one hand on the back of her chair, and, picking up a fan, fanned herself with some agitation. Isabey, after a few turns up and down the room, came back and scrutinized her as closely as she had examined him a few moments before.
“I think,” said Isabey, coolly changing the subject, “that the psychology of this war time is profoundly interesting. Not only everything is changed, but everybody. Two years ago you Virginia people were the quietest provincials that ever lived. I know you well. I have visited in Virginia, and I have seen hundreds of you at your baths and springs, and all of you are alike in some respects. I, who know the great round world well, was always impressed by these Virginia people as having been drugged. You didn’t seem to realize that the world was closing in round you, around the whole South, for that matter, and that some day a convulsion must come. I myself own three hundred negroes. My father owned nearly a thousand, but I have been preparing for a change ever since I grew a mustache. I have not gone on investing in land and negroes quite unconscious that any other values existed. If the North should succeed and the negroes should be free, I should not be penniless, but for most of the people of the South all values would be destroyed.”
Mrs. Charteris suspected that this digression was really meant by Isabey to lead away from the subject of Angela, which apparently was of such acute interest to him. But she answered promptly enough and according to her lights: