ew
Orleans! The mailed clutch on her throat (to speak as she felt) had
grown less ferocious, but everywhere the Unionist civilian--the once
brow-beaten and still loathed "Northern sympathizer," with grudges to
pay and losses to recoup and re-recoup--was in petty authority.
Confiscation was swallowing up not industrial and commercial properties
merely, but private homes; espionage peeped round every street corner
and into every back window, and "A. Ward's" ante-bellum jest, that "a
white man was as good as a nigger as long as he behaved himself," was a
jest no more. Miss Flora Valcour, that ever faithful and daring
Southerner, was believed by all the city's socially best to be
living--barely living--under "the infamous Greenleaf's" year-long threat
of Ship Island for having helped Anna Callender to escape to Mobile.
Hence her haunted look and pathetic loss of bloom. Now, however, with
him away and with General Canby ruling in place of Banks, she and her
dear fragile old grandmother could breathe a little.

They breathed much. We need not repeat that the younger was a gifted
borrower. She did other things equally well; resumed a sagacious
activity, a two-sided tact, and got Irby paroled. On the anniversary of
the day Hilary had played brick-mason a city paper (Unionist) joyfully
proclaimed the long-delayed confiscation of Kincaid's Foundry and of
Callender House, and announced that "the infamous Kincaid" himself had
been stripped of his commission by a "rebel" court-martial. Irby
promptly brought the sheet to the Valcours' lodgings, but Flora was out.
When she came in, before she could lay off her pretty hat:--

"You've heard it!" cried the excited grandam. "But why so dead-alive?
Once more the luck is yours! Play your knave! play Irby! He's just been
here! He will return! He will propose this evening if you allow him! Let
him do it! Let him! Mobile may fall any day! If you dilly-dally till
those accursed Callenders get back, asking, for instance, for their--ha,
ha!--their totally evaporated chest of plate--gr-r-r! Take him! He has
just shown me his uncle's will--as he calls it: a staring forgery, but
you, h-you won't mind _that_, and the 'ladies' man'--ah, the 'ladies'
man,' once you are his cousin, he'll never let on. Take Irby! he is, as
you say, a nincompoop"--she had dropped into English--"and seldom
sober, _mais_ take him! 't is the las' call of the auctioneer, yo'
fav-oreet auctioneer--with the pointed ears and th