“You will not like it, captain; but if I must, I must. All the women will be widows and the men shall sleep in early graves. They come from the north, from the east, from the west, they sweep to the gulf through a trail of blood. Your houses shall burn, your fields be laid waste, and a down-trodden race shall rule in your land. For you, captain, a prison cell and a pauper’s grave.

“The dinner-party broke up in a panic, and from that time my father could not abide the girl. He finally sold her just a few months before the secession of the Confederate States, and that was the last we ever knew of her.”

“And did the prophecy come true about your father?” asked Mr. Vance.

“Too true, sir; my father died while held as a prisoner of war, in Boston Harbor. And every woman at the table was left a widow. There is only too much truth in science of mesmeric phenomena. The world is a wonderful place.”

“Wonderful!” declared his hearers.

“I am thinking of that poor, pretty creature lying ill in that gloomy hospital without a friend. Men are selfish! I tell you what, folks, tomorrow after lunch we’ll make a Christmas visit to the patients, and carry them fruit and flowers. As for your beautiful patient, Dr. Briggs, she shall not be friendless any longer, she shall come to us at Vance Hall.”

“Molly!” broke simultaneously from Aubrey and Charlie.

“Oh, I mean it. There is plenty of room in this great house, and here she shall remain until she is restored to health.”

Expostulation was in vain. The petted heiress was determined, and when Mr. Vance was appealed to, he laughed and said, as he patted her hand:

“The queen must have her own.”

At length the costumer’s box was opened amidst jest, song and laughter. The characters were distributed by the wilful Molly. Thus attired, to the music of Tannhauser’s march, played by one of the girls on the piano, the gay crowd marched and counter-marched about the spacious room.

In the early morning hours, Aubrey Livingston slept and dreamed of Dianthe Lusk, and these words haunted his sleep and lingered with him when he woke:

“She had the glory of heaven in her voice, and in her face the fatal beauty of man’s terrible sins.”

Aubrey Livingston knew that he was as hopelessly lost as was Adam when he sold his heavenly birthright for a woman’s smile.

8 The word here was probably meant to be “fey,” though the typographical error appears in both the magazine version and subsequent book publications of the novel. In this context, “fey” means “doomed, fated soon to die, under the shadow of a sudden or violent death—often marked by extravagantly high spirits.” (Chambers Dictionary, 1867).