between this of Mozart and that of Mendelssohn, there was much for her
to ask and him to tell about; for instance, the new "Confederate
States," a bare fortnight old! Would Virginia come into them?
Eventually, yes.

"Oh, yes, yes, yes!" cried Constance, overhearing. (Whatever did not
begin with oh, those times, began with ah.)

"And _must_ war follow?" The question was Anna's again, and Hilary sat
down closer to answer confidentially:

"Yes, the war was already a fact."

"And might not the Abolitionists send their ships and soldiers against
New Orleans?"

"Yes, the case was supposable."

"And might not Jackson's battlefield of 1815, in close view from these
windows, become a new one?"

To avoid confessing that old battlefields have that tendency the Captain
rose and took up a guitar; but when he would have laid it on her knee
she pushed it away and asked the song of him; asked with something
intimate in her smiling undertone that thrilled him, yet on the next
instant seemed pure dream stuff. The others broke in and Constance
begged a song of the new patriotism; but Miranda, the pretty stepmother,
spoke rather for something a thousand miles and months away from the
troubles and heroics of the hour; and when Anna seconded this motion by
one fugitive glance worth all their beseechings Hilary, as he stood,