“Don’t you feel like a traitor, you sly Yankee?” Dick gave a great groan and said: 

“O Rosa, Rosa, I can’t go!  I do feel like a traitor.  I am a traitor.”

Jack, luckily, was sitting beside him, and brought his heel down on the lad’s toes with such emphasis that he uttered a cry of pain.  Rosa was all solicitude at this.

“What is it, Richard; have I wounded you?  Don’t mind my chatter; I only do it to tease you.  He shall be a Yankee; he shall make nutmegs; he shall abuse the chivalrous South; he shall be what he likes; he sha’n’t be teased—­” and she wound her bare arms about his neck, quite indifferent to the reproving nudges of mamma and the sad mirthfulness of Jack.

Dick found means in the noise of the chariot, and the crush they presently came into, for saying something that seemed to lessen the self-reproachful tone of the penitent, and, when they entered the modest portals of the presidency, Rosa was radiant and Dick equable, but not in his usual chattering volubility.

“You are sure you do not repent?  You can stay if you choose,” Jack said, as they entered the dressing-room.

“Where you go, I go; what you say is right I know is right, and I will do it.”  Dick looked away confusedly as he said this.  They were surrounded by young officers, all of whom the two young men knew.

“Ah, ha, Mr. Perley!  I have stolen a march on you; I have secured the first waltz from Miss Rosa,” a young man at the mirror cried, as Dick adjusted his gloves.

“Then, Captain Warrick, I’m likely to be a wall-flower, for the second, third, and fourth were promised yesterday.”

“Fortunes of war, my dear fellow—­fortunes of war.  You must lay siege to another fortress.”

“Dick,” Jack whispered, “it’s an omen.  It will give us time to slip out and change our garments without the danger of excuses, for, though nothing is suspected, any incautious phrase may destroy us.”

“Don’t fear for me.  I shall be prudent as a confessor.  We can’t go, however, just yet.  I must have a little talk with Rosa.  I may never see her again.  If you were in love and going from the light of her eye, perhaps never to see her again, you wouldn’t be so cool.  We must, anyway, take the ladies to the host and hostess for presentation; then a few words and I am ready.”  Dick was trembling visibly and blushing like a school-girl at first facing a class-day crowd.  Jack’s heart went out to the lad, and he thought the chances about even that when the moment of trial came the boy’s resolution would give way.  The ladies were waiting for them when they emerged into the corridors—­Rosa began, prettily, to rally Dick on his tardiness.  It took time to thread the constantly increasing crowd in the hallways, the corridors, and on the stairs, but they finally reached the group in which Mrs. Davis was receiving the confused salutations of the throng at the drawing-room door.  As soon as this formality