"I have seen you and my lover; you have the best clothes, and profess more. He has a nature that your opportunities would bring real refinement from. He respects me, wretched as I am; I read it in his eyes. You are looking for a way to degrade me in my own feelings, yet to deceive me. Can you be a gentleman?"

She was serene as if she had said nothing, though she rose up, and stood at one side of the fireplace, opposite him; between them was a print of General Jackson riding over the British.

In that moment Allan McLane felt that the girl was cheap at her grandmother's figure.

He had always conceived her a flexible, peculiar child; in a few minutes she had grown years, and become a rare and nearly stately woman, not now to be moulded, but to be tempted with large, worldly propositions.

"May I ask who this lover is that I am so much beneath, Hulda - I, who have taught you the accomplishments you chastise me with? I found you sand; I made you crystal."

He drew out a large pongee handkerchief, and really dropped some tears into it. She continued, cool and unmoved:

"My love is Levin Dennis, from Princess Anne. I am not afraid to tell it."

"Why?"

"Because I want his danger and mine to be fully known to him, and make him a man."

The Colonel folded his pongee, and came again to Hulda's side.

"That dissipated boy! Oh, Hulda, where is your real pride? He has abandoned his mother. He is a poor gypsy. No, I must save you from such a mistake. It is my duty to do it."

"I thank you for teaching me, whatever made you do it. If I could awaken in you some unselfishness towards me and my new love, sir, it would be the greatest gratitude I could show you. You conceal so many hard, bad things under your word 'conservative,' that the gentle feelings, like forgiveness, have forsaken you, I fear."

"No," the Colonel said, stiffly, his shoulders becoming more military, "insults to my honor I never forgive. People who do not resent, have no conservative principle."

"I forgive, as I hope to be forgiven, Joe, Aunt Patty, Van Dorn, and you. I hope pity and mercy and sweet, unselfish love, such as I think mine is, may grow in all of you! Oh, Colonel," - she turned to him earnestly, and, raising her hands to impress him, he merely noted the elegance of her wrists and brown arms"the buying and selling of these human beings makes everybody unfeeling. It is stealing their souls and bodies, whether they be bought at the court-house or kidnapped on the roads. My dream of joy is to have a husband who will work with his own free hands, and till his little farm, and sail his vessel, without a slave. Above that I expect and ask nothing from the dear God who has so long been my protector in this den of crime."

"Warm or cold, hectoring or tender, you are splendid, Hulda," McLane said, his face fairly refulgent. "Now let me show you a conservative picture of your real deserts. I am a bachelor. I keep an elegant house in Baltimore. My table is supplied with the best in the market; my servants are my slaves, and never disobey me; my paintings are celebrated; books I never run to - they are radical things - but I can buy them; my carriage is the best Rahway turn-out, and my horses are Diomeds. In Frederick County I have an estate, in sight of the mountains. As a Christian act, I will take you away from this spot, to which you seem but half kindred, and make you my wife."