. Clarence had picked them
only a few hours ago, in the dew at Bellegarde. She saw her cousin
standing disconsolate under the train sheds, just as she had left him.
She pictured him riding out the Bellefontaine Road that afternoon, alone.
Now that the ocean was to be between them, was it love that she felt for
Clarence at last? She glanced at her father. Once or twice she had
suspected him of wishing to separate them. Her Aunt Lillian, indeed, had
said as much, and Virginia had silenced her. But when she had asked the
Colonel to take Clarence to Europe, he had refused. And yet she knew that
he had begged Captain Lige to go.

Virginia had been at home but a week. She had seen the change in Clarence
and exulted. The very first day she had surprised him on the porch at
Bellegarde with "Hardee's tactics". From a boy Clarence had suddenly
become a man with a Purpose,--and that was the Purpose of the South.

"They have dared to nominate that dirty Lincoln," he said.--"Do you think
that we will submit to nigger equality rule? Never! never!" he cried. "If
they elect him, I will stand and fight them until my legs are shot from
under me, and then I will shoot down the Yankees from the ground."

Virginia's heart had leaped within her at the words, and into her eyes
had flashed once more the look for which the boy had waited and hoped in
vain. He had the carriage of a soldier, the animation and endurance of
the thoroughbred when roused. He was of the stuff that made the
resistance of the South the marvel of the world. And well we know,
whatever the sound of it, that his speech was not heroics. Nor was it
love for his cousin that inspired it, save in this: he had apotheosized
Virginia. To him she was the inspired goddess of the South--his country.
His admiration and affection had of late been laid upon an altar. Her
ambition for him he felt was likewise the South's ambition for him.

His mother, Virginia's aunt, felt this too, and strove against it with
her feeble might. She never had had power over her son; nor over any man,
save the temporal power of beauty. And to her mortification she found
herself actually in fear of this girl who might have been her daughter.
So in Virginia's presence she became more trivial and petty than ever. It
was her one defence.

It had of course been a foregone conclusion that Clarence should join
Company A. Few young men of family did not. And now he ran to his room to
don for Virginia that glorio