Who is this lover of your daughter?"

An expression of agitation and cunning passed over Mrs. Basil's face.

"Colonel Reybold," she whined, "I pity your blasted hopes. If I was a
widow, they should be comfoted. Alas! my daughter is in love with one
of the Fitzchews of Fawqueeah. His parents is cousins of the Jedge,
and attached to the military."

The Congressman looked disappointed, but not yet satisfied.

"Give me at once the address of your husband," he spoke. "If you do
not, I shall ask your daughter for it, and she cannot refuse me."

The mistress of the boarding-house was not without alarm, but she
dispelled it with an outbreak of anger.

"If my daughter disobeys her mother," she cried, "and betrays the
Jedge's incog., she is no Basil, Colonel Reybold. The Basils repudiate
her, and she may jine the Dutch and other foreigners at her pleasure."

"That is her only safety," exclaimed Reybold. "I hope to break every
string that holds her to yonder barren honor and exhausted soil."

He pointed toward Virginia, and hastened away to the Capitol. All the
way up the squalid and muddy avenue of that day he mused and wondered:
"Who is Fitzhugh? Is there such a person any more than a Judge Basil?
And yet there _is_ a Judge, for Joyce has told me so. _She_, at least,
cannot lie to me. At last," he thought, "the dream of my happiness is
over. Invincible in her prejudice as all these Virginians, Joyce Basil