Up to that moment, so great had been the excitement and so quick had been the movements of the Federals that no one had asked or even thought of Angela’s whereabouts. But suddenly Lyddon spoke: “Where is Angela?”
No one could answer, so Lyddon, taking a candle in his hand, went quietly upstairs and along the corridor until he reached her door, when he knocked loudly on it. Angela’s voice from within replied like the starling: “I can’t get out! The key is broken in the lock.”
Lyddon took out his penknife and in half a minute had unlocked the door. Angela came out of the room, her rich fair hair falling loose about her shoulders. She had huddled on a skirt and concealed the deficiencies of her toilet with her red mantle.
“What has happened?” she asked excitedly and seizing Lyddon’s arm. “I heard the most terrible noise, and looked out of the window, and saw that the place was full of soldiers, and then I slipped on my clothes and tried to get out and couldn’t. You can’t imagine how terrible it was to be shut up there and know that something dreadful was happening outside.”
“Nothing particularly dreadful has happened,” replied Lyddon, calmly. “Colonel Gratiot has been bagged, that is all. A gunboat with a lot of soldiers was sent after him.”
By that time they were at the stairs, and Angela, running lightly down, joined the group in the hall. As soon as she reached the hall, which was dimly lighted by a couple of candles on the mantelpiece, everybody began to talk to her at once except Adrienne, who remained, as always, beautifully composed. Even Mrs. Tremaine became excited, while Madame Isabey poured out her feelings in English, French, and Spanish. Archie interjected his account, while Hector bawled above them all:
“All de derangements was mos’ unmilitary. Miss Angela. Dey didn’ have no scouts, no aide-de-camps, no ban’ ob music, no nuttin’ ’tall. When me an’ Marse, we stormed de heights at Chapultepec, de ban’ was a-playin’ ‘I wants to be a angel,’ an’, I tell you, me an’ Marse made a heap ob Mexican angels dat day.”
“I think, ladies,” said Colonel Tremaine calmly, “that you had better try and get your beauty sleep, which has been so rudely disturbed. If you will excuse me, I will retire. Come, boy,” to Hector, “and get my boots off.” Hector followed the Colonel, still mumbling about the glories of Chapultepec and Buena Vista. All soon took the Colonel’s advice, except Angela and Lyddon, who lingered after the others had departed.
Angela, with her newly developed instinct of thrift, blew out one of the candles on the hall mantelpiece. The remaining candle cast a faint light upon the dingy Penelope, who had waited in that spot during a century for her Ulysses. All the events of the night had passed so swiftly that there was not really much to tell, but Angela wanted to hear it all over again and in connected fashion.
“Wasn’t it strange,” she said, “that the last time a Confederate officer was here, Captain Isabey, the Federals came after him, although they didn’t get him, and now they have caught Colonel Gratiot?”