Ten minutes after my arrival I saw that Mohun was passionately in love
with Miss Georgia; and I thought I perceived as clearly that she
returned his affection. Their eyes--those tell-tales--were incessantly
meeting; and Mohun followed every movement of the queenly girl with
those long, fixed glances, which leave nothing in doubt.
The younger sister, Miss Virginia, received me with charming sweetness,
but a secret melancholy weighed down the dusky eye-lashes. The blue
eyes were sad; the very smiles on the rosy lips were sad. All was plain
here, too, at a single glance. The pure girl had given her heart to the
brave Willie Davenant, and some mysterious hostility of her father
toward the young officer, forced them apart.
What was the origin of that hostility? Why had Judge Conway so abruptly
torn his daughter away from Davenant at the ball in Culpeper--and why
had that shadow passed over the old statesman's brow when I uttered the
name of the young man in Richmond?
I asked myself these questions vainly--and decided in my mind that I
should probably never know.
I was mistaken. I was going to know before midnight.
After an excellent supper, over which Miss Georgia presided with
stately dignity--for she, too, had changed, in as marked a degree as
Mohun,--I rose, declared I must return to Petersburg, and bade the
young ladies, who cordially pressed me to remain, good-night.
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