“I would rather remain with you,” he replied.
“I would rather be alone with my aunt a while.”
A deep sigh expressed his dejecting sense of how futile it would be to oppose her.
“As you will,” he then said, and, bowing gravely, left the parlor.
Elizabeth’s feelings now burst out.
“Oh,” she exclaimed to her aunt, “what a chicken-hearted copy of a man! And he calls himself a soldier! I wonder where he found the spirit to volunteer!”
“From you, my dear,” replied Miss Sally. “Didn’t you urge him to take a commission?”
“And that rebel fellow had the best of it all through,” Elizabeth went on. “I was to see him laid low by his rival, as my crowning revenge! How he swaggered out! with what a look of triumph in his eye! And—aunt Sally! He won’t come back! I shall never see him again!”
“Why, child, do you wish to?”
“Of course not! But I can’t have him go away with the laugh on his side! He made me ridiculous after my trying to stab him with my love for the other man. Such another man! Oh, the rebel must come back!”