THE afternoon was very sultry; however, Mr. Thorold came, and we went for our walk. It was so sultry we went very leisurely and also met few people; and instead of looking very carefully at the beauties of nature and art we had come to see, we got into a great talk as we strolled along; indeed, sometimes we stopped and sat down to talk. Mr. Thorold told me about himself, or rather, about his home in Vermont and his old life there. He had no mother, and no brothers nor sisters; only his father. And he described to me the hills of his native country, and the farm his father cultivated, and the people, and the life on the mountains. Strong and free and fresh and independent and intelligent—that was the impression his talk made upon me, of the country and people and life alike. Sometimes my thoughts took a private turn of their own, branching off.

"Mr. Thorold," said I, "do you know Mr. Davis of Mississippi?"

"Davis? No, I don't know him," he said shortly.

"You have seen him?"

"Yes, I have seen him often enough; and his wife, too."

"Do you like his looks?"

"I do not."

"He looks to me like a bad man—" I said slowly. I said it to Mr. Thorold; I would hardly have made the remark to another at West Point.

"He is about bad business—" was my companion's answer. "And yet I do not know what he is about; but I distrust the man."

"Mr. Thorold," said I, beginning cautiously, "do you want to have slavery go into the territories?"

"No!" said he. "Do you?"

"No. What do you think would happen if a Northern President should be elected in the fall?"

"Then slavery would not go into the territories," he said, looking a little surprised at me. "The question would be settled."

"But do you know some people say—some people at the South say—that if a Northern President is elected, the Southern States will not submit to him?"

"Some people talk a great deal of nonsense," said Mr. Thorold. "How could they help submitting?"

"They say—it is said—that they would break off from the North and set up for themselves. It is not foolish people that say it, Mr. Thorold."

"Will you pardon me, Miss Randolph, but I think they would be very foolish people that would do it."

"Oh, I think so too," I said. "I mean, that some people who are not foolish believe that it might happen."

"Perhaps," said Mr. Thorold. "I never heard anything of it before. You are from the South yourself, Miss Randolph?" he added, looking at me.

"I was born there," I said. And a little silence fell between us. I was thinking. Some impression, got I suppose from my remembrance of father and mother, Preston, and others whom I had known, forbade me to dismiss quite so lightly, as too absurd to be true, the rumour I had heard. Moreover, I trusted Dr. Sandford's sources of information, living as he did in habits of close social intercourse with men of influence and position at Washington, both Southern and Northern.

"Mr. Thorold,"—I broke the silence,—"if the South should do such a thing, what would happen?"

"There would be trouble," he said.

"What sort of trouble?"

"Might be all sorts," said Mr. Thorold, laughing; "it would depend on how far people's folly would carry them."

"But suppose the Southern States should just do that;—say they would break off and govern themselves?"

"They would be like a bad boy that has to be made to take medicine."

"How could you make them?" I asked, feeling unreasonably grave about the question.

"You can see, Miss Randolph, that such a thing could not be permitted. A government that would let any part of its subjects break away at their pleasure from its rule, would deserve to go to pieces. If one part might go, another part might go. There would be no nation left."

"But how could you help it?" I asked.

"I don't know whether we could help it," he said; "but we would try."

"You do not mean that it would come to fighting?"

"I do not think they would be such fools. I hope we are supposing a very unlikely thing, Miss Randolph."

I hoped so. But that impression of Southern character troubled me yet. Fighting! I looked at the peaceful hills, feeling as if indeed "all the foundations of the earth" would be "out of course."

"What would you do in case it came to fighting?" said my neighbour. The words startled me out of my meditations.

"I could not do anything."

"I beg your pardon. Your favour—your countenance, would do much; on one side or the other. You would fight—in effect—as surely as I should."

I looked up. "Not against you," I said; for I could not bear to be misunderstood.

There was a strange sparkle in Mr. Thorold's eye; but those flashes of light came and went so like flashes, that I could not always tell what they meant. The tone of his voice, however, I knew expressed pleasure.

"How comes that?" he said. "You are Southern?"

"Do I look it?" I asked.

"Pardon me—yes."

"How, Mr. Thorold?"

"You must excuse me. I cannot tell you. But you are South?"

"Yes," I said. "At least, all my friends are Southern. I was born there."

"You have one Northern friend," said Mr. Thorold, as we rose up to go on. He said it with meaning. I looked up and smiled. There was a smile in his eyes, mixed with something more. I think our compact of friendship was made and settled then and at once.

He stretched out his hand, as if for a further ratification. I put mine in it, while he went on,—"How comes it, then, that you take such a view of such a question?"

There had sprung up a new tone in our intercourse, of more familiarity, and more intimate trust. It gave infinite content to me; and I went on to answer, telling him about my Northern life. Drawn on, from question to question, I detailed at length my Southern experience also, and put my new friend in possession not only of my opinions, but of the training under which they had been formed. My hand, I remember, remained in his while I talked, as if he had been my brother; till he suddenly put it down and plunged into the bushes for a bunch of wild roses. A party of walkers came round an angle a moment after; and waking up to a consciousness of our surroundings, we found, or I did, that we were just at the end of the rocky walk, where we must mount up and take to the plain.

The evening was falling very fair over plain and hill when we got to the upper level. Mr. Thorold proposed that I should go and see the camp, which I liked very much to do. So he took me all through it, and showed and explained all sorts of things about the tents and the manner of life they lived in them. He said he should like it very much, if he only had more room; but three or four in one little tent nine feet by nine, gave hardly, as he said, "a chance to a fellow." The tents and the camp alleys were full of cadets, loitering about, or talking, or busy with their accoutrements; here and there I saw an officer. Captain Percival bowed, Captain Lascelles spoke. I looked for Preston, but I could see him nowhere. Then Mr. Thorold brought me into his own tent, introduced one or two cadets who were loitering there, and who immediately took themselves away; and made me sit down on what he called a "locker." The tent curtains were rolled tight up, as far as they would go, and so were the curtains of every other tent; most beautiful order prevailed everywhere and over every trifling detail.

"Well," said Mr. Thorold, sitting down opposite me on a candle-box—"how do you think you would like camp life?"

"The tents are too close together," I said.

He laughed, with a good deal of amusement.

"That will do!" he said. "You begin by knocking the camp to pieces."

"But it is beautiful," I went on.

"And not comfortable. Well, it is pretty comfortable," he said.

"How do you do when it storms very hard—at night?"

"Sleep."

"Don't you ever get wet?"

"That makes no difference."

"Sleep in the rain!" said I. And he laughed again at me. It was not banter. The whole look and air of the man testified to a thorough soldierly, manly contempt of little things—of all things that might come in the way of order and his duty. An intrinsic independence and withal control of circumstances, in so far as the mind can control them. I read the power to do it. But I wondered to myself if he never got homesick in that little tent and full camp. It would not do to touch the question.

"Do you know Preston Gary?" I asked. "He is a cadet."

"I know him."

I thought the tone of the words, careless as they were, signified little value for the knowledge.

"I have not seen him anywhere," I remarked.

"Do you want to see him? He has seen you."

"No, he cannot," I said, "or he would have come to speak to me."

"He would if he could," replied Mr. Thorold—"no doubt; but the liberty is wanting. He is on guard. We crossed his path as we came into the camp."

"On guard!" I said. "Is he? Why, he was on guard only a day or two ago. Does it come so often?"

"It comes pretty often in Gary's case," said my companion.

"Does it?" I said. "He does not like it."

"No," said Mr. Thorold, merrily. "It is not a favourite amusement in most cases."

"Then why does he have so much of it?"

"Gary is not fond of discipline."

I guessed this might be true. I knew enough of Preston for that. But it startled me.

"Does he not obey the regulations?" I asked presently, in a lowered tone.

Mr. Thorold smiled. "He is a friend of yours, Miss Randolph?"

"Yes," I said; "he is my mother's nephew."

"Then he is your cousin?" said my companion. Another of those penetrative glances fell on me. They were peculiar; they flashed upon me, or through me, as keen and clear as the flash of a sabre in the sun; and out of eyes in which a sunlight of merriment or benignity was even then glowing. Both glowed upon me just at this moment, so I did not mind the keen investigation. Indeed, I never minded it. I learned to know it as one of Mr. Thorold's peculiarities. Now, Dr. Sandford had a good eye for reading people, but it never flashed, unless under strong excitement. Mr. Thorold's were dancing and flashing and sparkling with fifty things by turns; their fund of amusement and power of observation were the first things that struck me, and they attracted me too.

"Then he is your cousin?"

"Of course, he is my cousin."

I thought Mr. Thorold seemed a little bit grave and silent for a moment; then he rose up, with that benign look of his eyes glowing all over me, and told me there was the drum for parade. "Only the first drum," he added; so I need not be in a hurry. Would I go home before parade?

I thought I would. If Preston was pacing up and down the side of the camp ground, I thought I did not want to see him nor to have him see me, as he was there for what I called disgrace. Moreover, I had a secret presentiment of a breezy discussion with him the next time there was a chance.

And I was not disappointed. The next day in the afternoon he came to see us. Mrs. Sandford and I were sitting on the piazza, where the heat of an excessive sultry day was now relieved a little by a slender breeze coming out of the north-west. It was very hot still. Preston sat down and made conversation in an abstracted way for a little while.

"We did not see you at the hop the other night, Mr. Gary," Mrs. Sandford remarked.

"No. Were you there?" said Preston.

"Everybody was there—except you."

"And Daisy? Were you there, Daisy?"

"Certainly," Mrs. Sandford responded. "Everybody else could have been better missed."

"I did not know you went there," said Preston, in something so like a growl that Mrs. Sandford lifted her eyes to look at him.

"I do not wonder you are jealous," she said composedly.

"Jealous!" said Preston, with growl the second.

"You had more reason than you knew."

Preston grumbled something about the hops being "stupid places." I kept carefully still.

"Daisy, did you go?"

I looked up and said yes.

"Whom did you dance with?"

"With everybody," said Mrs. Sandford. "That is, so far as the length of the evening made it possible. Blue and grey, and all colours."

"I don't want you to dance with everybody," said Preston, in a more undertone growl.

"There is no way to prevent it," said Mrs. Sandford, "but to be there and ask her yourself."

I did not thank Mrs. Sandford privately for this suggestion; which Preston immediately followed up by inquiring "if we were going to the hop to-night?"

"Certainly," Mrs. Sandford said.

"It's too confounded hot!"

"Not for us who are accustomed to the climate," Mrs. Sandford said, with spirit.

"It's a bore altogether," muttered Preston. "Daisy, are you going to-night?"

"I suppose so."

"Well, if you must go, you may as well dance with me as with anybody. So tell anybody else that you are engaged. I will take care of you."

"Don't you wish to dance with anybody except me?"

"I do not," said Preston, slowly. "As I said, it is too hot. I consider the whole thing a bore."

"You shall not be bored for me," I said. "I refuse to dance with you. I hope I shall not see you there at all."

"Daisy!"

"Well?"

"Come down and take a little walk with me."

"You said it is too hot."

"But you will dance?"

"You will not dance."

"I want to speak to you, Daisy."

"You may speak," I said. I did not want to hear him, for there were no indications of anything agreeable in Preston's manner.

"Daisy!" he said, "I do not know you."

"You used to know her," said Mrs. Sandford; "that is all."

"Will you come and walk with me?" said Preston, almost angrily.

"I do not think it would be pleasant," I said.

"You were walking yesterday afternoon."

"Yes."

"Come and walk up and down the piazza, anyhow. You can do that."

I could, and did not refuse. He chose the sunny western side, because no one was there. However, the sun's rays were obscured under a thick haze and had been all day.

"Whom were you with?" Preston inquired, as soon as we were out of earshot.

"Do you mean yesterday?"

"Of course I mean yesterday! I saw you cross into the camp With whom were you going there?"

"Why did you not come to speak to me?" I said.

"I was on duty. I could not."

"I did not see you anywhere."

"I was on guard. You crossed my path not ten feet off."

"Then you must know whom I was with, Preston," I said, looking at him.

"You don't know—that is the thing. It was that fellow Thorold."

"How came you to be on guard again so soon? You were on guard just a day or two before."

"That is all right enough. It is about military things that you do not understand. It is all right enough, except these confounded Yankees. And Thorold is another."

"Who is one!" I said, laughing. "You say he is another."

"Blunt is one."

"I like Major Blunt."

"Daisy," said Preston, stopping short, "you ought to be with your mother. There is nobody to take care of you here. How came you to know that Thorold?"

"He was introduced to me. What is the matter with him?"

"You ought not to be going about with him. He is a regular Yankee, I tell you."

"What does that mean?" I said. "You speak it as if you meant something very objectionable."

"I do. They are a cowardly set of tailors. They have no idea what a gentleman means, not one of them, unless they have caught the idea from a Southerner. I don't want you to have anything to do with them, Daisy. You must not dance with them, and you must not be seen with this Thorold. Promise me you will not."

"Dr. Sandford is another," I said.

"I can't help Dr. Sandford. He is your guardian. You must not go again with Thorold!"

"Did you ever know him cowardly?" I asked.

I was sure that Preston coloured; whether with any feeling beside anger I could not make out; but the anger was certain.

"What do you know about it?" he asked.

"What do you?" I rejoined. But Preston changed more and more.

"Daisy, promise me you will not have anything to do with these fellows. You are too good to dance with them. There are plenty of Southern people here now, and lots of Southern cadets."

"Mr. Caxton is one," I said. "I don't like him."

"He is of an excellent Georgia family," said Preston.

"I cannot help that. He is neither gentlemanly in his habits nor true in his speech."

Preston hereupon broke out into an untempered abuse of Northern things in general, and Northern cadets in particular, mingled with a repetition of his demands upon me. At length I turned from him.

"This is very tiresome, Preston," I said; "and this side of the house is very warm. Of course, I must dance with whoever asks me."

"Well, I have asked you for this evening," he said, following me.

"You are not to go," I said. "I shall not dance with you once," and I took my former place by Mrs. Sandford. Preston fumed; declared that I was just like a piece of marble; and went away. I did not feel quite so impassive as he said I looked.

"What are you going to wear to-night, Daisy?" Mrs. Sandford asked presently.

"I do not know, ma'am."

"But you must know soon, my dear. Have you agreed to give your cousin half the evening?"

"No, ma'am—I could not; I am engaged for every dance, and more."

"More!" said Mrs. Sandford.

"Yes, ma'am—for the next time."

"Preston has reason!" she said, laughing. "But I think, Daisy, Grant will be the most jealous of all. Do him good. What will become of his sciences and his microscope now?"

"Why, I shall be just as ready for them," I said.

Mrs. Sandford shook her head. "You will find the hops will take more than that," she said. "But now, Daisy, think what you will wear; for we must go soon and get ready."

I did not want to think about it. I expected, of course, to put on the same dress I had worn the last time. But Mrs. Sandford objected very strongly.

"You must not wear the same thing twice running," she said, "not if you can help it."

I could not imagine why not.

"It is quite nice enough," I urged. "It is scarcely the least tumbled in the world."

"People will think you have not another, my dear."

"What matter would that be?" I said, wholly puzzled.

"Now, my dear Daisy!" said Mrs. Sandford, half laughing—"you are the veriest Daisy in the world, and do not understand the world that you grow in. No matter; just oblige me, and put on something else to-night. What have you got?"

I had other dresses like the rejected one. I had another still, white like them, but the make and quality were different. I hardly knew what it was, for I had never worn it; to please Mrs. Sandford I took it out now. She was pleased. It was like the rest, out of the store my mother had sent me; a soft India muslin, of beautiful texture, made and trimmed as my mother and a Parisian artist could manage between them. But no Parisian artist could know better than my mother how a thing should be.

"That will do!" said Mrs. Sandford approvingly. "Dear me, what lace you Southern ladies do wear, to be sure! A blue sash, now, Daisy?"

"No, ma'am, I think not."

"Rose? It must be blue or rose."

But I thought differently, and kept it white.

"No colour?" said Mrs. Sandford. "None at all. Then let me just put this little bit of green in your hair."

As I stood before the glass and she tried various positions for some geranium leaves, I felt that would not do either. Any dressing of my head would commonize the whole thing. I watched her fingers and the geranium leaves going from one side of my head to the other, watched how every touch changed the tone of my costume, and felt that I could not suffer it; and then it suddenly occurred to me that I, who a little while before had not cared about my dress for the evening, now did care and that determinedly. I knew I would wear no geranium leaves, not even to please Mrs. Sandford. And for the first time a question stole into my mind, what was I, Daisy, doing? But then I said to myself, that the dress without this head adorning was perfect in its elegance; it suited me; and it was not wrong to like beauty, nor to dislike things in bad taste. Perhaps I was too handsomely dressed, but I could not change that now. Another time I would go back to my embroidered muslins, and stay there.

"I like it better without anything, Mrs. Sandford," I said, removing her green decorations and turning away from the glass. Mrs. Sandford sighed, but said "it would do without them," and then we started.

I can see it all again; I can almost feel the omnibus roll with me over the plain, that still sultry night. All those nights were sultry. Then, as we came near the Academic Building, I could see the lights in the upper windows; here and there an officer sitting in a window-sill, and the figures of cadets passing back and forth. Then we mounted to the hall above, filled with cadets in a little crowd, and words of recognition came, and Preston, meeting us almost before we got out of the dressing-room.

"Daisy, you dance with me?"

"I am engaged, Preston, for the first dance."

"Already! The second, then, and all the others?"

"I am engaged," I repeated, and left him, for Mr. Thorold was at my side.

I forgot Preston the next minute. It was easy to forget him, for all the first half of the evening I was honestly happy in dancing. In talking, too, whenever Thorold was my partner; other people's talk was very tiresome. They went over the platitudes of the day; or they started subjects of interest that were not interesting to me. Bits of gossip—discussions of fashionable amusements with which I could have nothing to do; frivolous badinage, which was of all things most distasteful to me. Yet, amid it, I believe there was a subtle incense of admiration which by degrees and insensibly found its way to my senses. But I had two dances with Thorold, and at those times I was myself and enjoyed unalloyed pleasure. And so I thought did he.

I saw Preston, when now and then I caught a glimpse of him, looking excessively glum. Midway in the evening it happened that I was standing beside him for a few moments, waiting for my next partner.

"You are dancing with nobody but that man whom I hate!" he grumbled. "Who is it now?"

"Captain Vaux."

"Will you dance with me after that?"

"I cannot, Preston. I must dance with Major Banks."

"You seem to like it pretty well," he growled.

"No wonder," said Mrs. Sandford. "You were quite right about the geranium leaves, Daisy; you do not want them. You do not want anything, my dear," she whispered.

At this instant a fresh party entered the room, just as my partner came up to claim me.

"There are some handsome girls," said the captain. "Two of them, really!"

"People from Cozzens's," said Mrs. Sandford, "who think the cadets keep New York hours."

It was Faustina St. Clair and Mary Lansing, with their friends and guardians, I don't know whom. And as I moved to take my place in the dance, I was presently confronted by my school adversary and the partner she had immediately found. The greeting was very slight and cool on her side.

"Excessively handsome," whispered the captain. "A friend of yours?"

"A schoolfellow," I said.

"Must be a pleasant thing, I declare, to have such handsome schoolfellows," said the captain. "Beauty is a great thing, isn't it? I wonder, sometimes, how the ladies can make up their minds to take up with such great rough ugly fellows as we are, for a set. How do you think it is?"

I thought it was wonderful, too, when they were like him. But I said nothing.

"Dress, too," said the captain. "Now look at our dress! Straight and square and stiff, and no variety in it. While our eyes are delighted, on the other side, with soft draperies and fine colours, and combinations of grace and elegance that are fit to put a man in Elysium!"

"Did you notice the colour of the haze in the west, this evening, at sunset?" I asked.

"Haze? No, really. I didn't know there was any haze, really, except in my head. I get hazy amidst these combinations. Seriously, Miss Randolph, what do you think of a soldier's life?"

"It depends on who the soldier is," I said.

"Cool, really!" said the captain. "Cool! Ha! ha!—"

And he laughed, till I wondered what I could have said to amuse him so much.

"Then you have learned to individualize soldiers already?" was his next question, put with a look which seemed to me inquisitive and impertinent. I did not know how to answer it, and left it unanswered; and the captain and I had the rest of our dance out in silence. Meanwhile, I could not help watching Faustina. She was so very handsome, with a marked, dashing sort of beauty that I saw was prodigiously admired. She took no notice of me, and barely touched the tips of my fingers with her glove as we passed in the dance.

As he was leading me back to Mrs. Sandford, the captain stooped his head to mine. "Forgive me," he whispered. "So much gentleness cannot bear revenge. I am only a soldier."

"Forgive you what, sir?" I asked. And he drew up his head again, half laughed, muttered that I was worse than grape or round shot, and handed me over to my guardian.

"My dear Daisy," said Mrs. Sandford, "If you were not so sweet as you are, you would be a queen. There, now, do not lift up your grey eyes at me like that, or I shall make you a reverence the first thing I do, and fancy that I am one of your dames d'honneur. Who is next? Major Banks? Take care, Daisy, or you'll do some mischief."

I had not time to think about her words; the dances went forward, and I took my part in them with great pleasure until the tattoo summons broke us up. Indeed, my pleasure lasted until we got home to the hotel, and I heard Mrs. Sandford saying, in an aside to her husband, amid some rejoicing over me—"I was dreadfully afraid she wouldn't go." The words, or something in them, gave me a check. However, I had too many exciting things to think of to take it up just then, and my brain was in a whirl of pleasure till I went to sleep.