"Engaged herself to a Yankee? But, oh, Madam, what an affliction! what a humiliation!"
"Yes, Sir, 't is all that."
"I agree with Mr. Davis, Madam, that the Yankees are the scum of the world. Is there no way by which you can avert from your family the threatened disgrace?"
"Well, Sir, I have formed a plan, and, if you will lend me your aid, I think we may manage to put the infatuated girl for a time where she will have an opportunity of recovering her senses."
"My dear Madam, I shall be delighted to serve you in any such good work. To save youth and beauty from the polluting touch of a Yankee captain might well call forth the warmest zeal, the most devoted daring, of any native of the sunny South."
"Sir, your sentiments do you honor. This, then, is my scheme—Is there any chance of our being overheard?"
"By none except the invisibles," said Glide; "and they probably exist only in the imagination of Yankee fanatics."
"My plan," whispered the lady, "is to put my daughter in a convent until the gentleman to whom I have promised her, Colonel Pegram of the Confederate army, can have an opportunity of seeing her. Of course it would not take him five minutes to drive out of her head all thought of this Yankee lover."
"And has your daughter, Madam, no suspicion of this admirable scheme of yours?"
"Not the slightest. She supposes we are going to Montreal on business of her father's."