“In that case I hope I shall he hated.  I shall shun people who love me,” and with that she struck the horse a lively tap and soon was far ahead of her tongue-tied wooer.  Was this a challenge?  Vincent asked himself, as he sped after her.  When he reached her side the tender words were chilled on his lips, for Olympia had in her laughing eye the, to him, odious expression he saw there when she made the irritating speech about himself and Jack a few minutes before.  Fearing a teasing retort, he bridled the tender outburst and rode along pensively, revolving pretexts for another day’s stay in Acredale.  But when they reached home he found an imperative mandate to set out at once, as his lingering in the North was subjecting himself and kinsmen to doubt among the zealous partisans of the Davis party.  Olympia was alone in the library when he ran down to tell Jack that he must start at once.  He took it as an omen, and said, confusedly: 

“It is decided; I must go in the morning.”

As this had been the plan all along, she looked up at him in surprise, not knowing, of course, that he had been thinking of putting off the fixed time.

“Yes, everything has been made ready; Jack will take you to Warchester, and we shall drive over to see you en route.”

“It is fortunate the letter from my mother came to-night.”  He stood quite, over her chair, his eyes glittering strangely, his manner excited.

“Do you know what they think at home?  They say that I—­I am not true to my cause; that my heart is with the North—­that I want to stay here.”

“They won’t think that when they hear you, as we have, breathing fury and wrath against the Lincolnites,” Olympia briskly replied, as if to proffer her services as witness to his misguided loyalty to the South.

“Ah, don’t be so ungenerous, now—­at this time.  I never talk like that now—­here—­never before you.”  He hesitated, and his voice dropped.  “Why will you put a fellow in a ridiculous light?  Your sneers almost make me ashamed of my honest pride in my State—­my enthusiasm for our sacred cause.”

“Deep feeling isn’t so easily shaken; true love should brave all things—­even sneers and blows.”

“If I should tell you that I loved somebody, I am sure you would make me seem ridiculous or ignorant of my own mind.”

“Then pray be wise and don’t tell me.  It’s bad enough to be in love, without being photographed in the agony.”

He looked at her in angry perplexity.  Could she ever be serious?  Was all the tenderness of the past only heedless coquetry?  Had she danced with him, drove with him, sailed with him, walked in the moonlight and made much of him in mere wanton mischief?  What right had she to be so pretty and so—­without heart or sensibility?  A Southern girl with the word love on a young man’s lips would have become a Circe of seductive wooing until the tale were told, even though she could not give her heart in return.