on to his country, sustained by a chivalrous tone of honor
that had in it all the fanciful disinterestedness of boyhood. It will
not, therefore, appear wonderful that, amongst the golden opinions the
young man was storing up in all quarters, some fragments of this grace
should have made a lodgment in the heart of Mildred Lindsay.

Butler was a native of one of the lower districts of South Carolina, and
was already the possessor, by inheritance, of what was then called a
handsome fortune. He first met Mildred, under the safe-conduct of her
parents, at Annapolis in Maryland, at that time the seat of opulence and
fashion. There the wise and the gay, the beautiful and the rarely-gifted
united in a splendid little constellation, in which wealth threw its
sun-beam glitter over the wings of love, and learning and eloquence
were warmed by the smiles of fair women: there gallant men gave the
fascinations of wit to a festive circle unsurpassed in the new world, or
the old, for its proportion of the graces that embellish, and the
endowments that enrich life. In this circle there was no budding beauty
of softer charm than the young Mildred, nor was there amongst the gay
and bright cavaliers that thronged the "little academy" of Eden, (the
governor of the province,) a youth of more favorable omen than Arthur
Butler.

The war was at the very threshold, and angry men thought of turning the
ploughshare into the sword. Amongst these was Butler; an unsparing
denouncer of the policy of Britain, and an unhesitating volunteer in the
ranks of her opposers. It was at this eventful time that he met Mildred.
I need hardly add that under these inauspicious circumstances they began
to love. Every interview afterwards (and they frequently saw each other
at Williamsburg and Richmond) only developed more completely the tale of
love that nature was telling in the heart of each.

Butler received from Congress an ensign's commission in the continental
army, and was employed for a few months in the recruiting service at
Charlottesville. This position favored his views and enabled him to
visit at the Dove Cote. His intercourse with Mildred, up to this period,
had been allowed by Lindsay to pass without comment: it was regarded but
as the customary and common-place civility of polite society. Mildred's
parents had no sympathy in her lover's sentiments, and consequently no
especial admiration of his character, and they had not yet doubted their
daughter'