ge for
her lieutenant, Carlisle, to come to her. The latter was absent at
some western point, but within two days he appeared in Washington
and presently made his call, as yet ignorant of what were his
employer's wishes.

He himself began eagerly, the fanatic fire still in his eye, on
details of the work so near to his soul. "My dear Countess," he
exclaimed, even as he grasped her hands, "we're doing splendidly.
We'll have the whole Mississippi Valley in an uproar before long.
All the lower Ohio is unsettled. Missouri, Illinois, Indiana are
muttering as loudly as New England. I hear that Lily has led away
a whole neighborhood over in Missouri. A few months more like
this, and we'll have this whole country in a turmoil. It's bound
to win--the country's bound to come to its senses--if we keep on."

"But we can not keep on, my dear Sir," she said to him slowly.
"That is why I have sent for you."

"How do you mean? What's wrong? Can not keep on--end our work?
You're jesting!"

"No, it is the truth. Kossuth is in Turkey. Shall I join him
there? Where shall I go? I'm an exile from France. I dare not
return to Hungary."

"You--I'll--I'll not believe it! What do you mean?"

"I am ruined financially, that's all. My funds are at an end. My
estates are gone! My agent tells me he can send me no more money.
How much do you think," she said, with a little _moue_, "we can do
in the way of deporting blacks out of my earnings--well, say as
teacher of music, or of French?"

"I'll not believe it--you--why, you've been used to riches,
luxuries, all your life! And I--why, I've helped impoverish you!
I've been spending your money. A ship-load of blacks, against you?
My God! I'd have cut my hand off rather."

She showed him the correspondence, proof of all that she had said,
and he read with a face haggard in unhappiness.'

"There' There!" she said. "You've not heard me make any outcry
yet, have you? Why should you, then? I have seen men lay down
their lives for a principle, a belief. You will see that again.
Should not a woman lay down her money?

"But as to that," she went on lightly, "why, there are many things
one might do. I might make a rich alliance, don't you think?"

He suddenly stiffened and straightened, and looked her full in the
eye, a slow flush coming across his face.

"I couldn't have said it any time before this," said he. "It has
been in my heart all along, but I didn't dare--not th