Charles smiled, and pressed her hand. "Do not alarm yourself, dearest," said he, "I love you too well to rashly expose myself to danger. I have ever entertained a just horror of the inhuman and barbarous practice at which you hint; and beside," continued he, earnestly, fixing his eyes upon her face with such tenderness that the blood rushed unconsciously to her temples beneath that dear gaze, "since your words of hope and love to me to-day, existence possesses new value in my eyes. Be assured I shall not rashly peril it." They parted with kind looks and a timid pressure of the hands. Medwin firmly resolved, let what would happen, to keep his promise to his beautiful Creole; and Clara, convinced that, although she had been bred and educated in the midst of a community where not to fight was of itself dishonorable, she should be _entirely_ satisfied with what the world, or even her own mother should say, about his cowardice and want of honor. Poor girl! she had sadly miscalculated both the effects of the act she had advised, and the strength of her own resolution. In a few days Mrs. Harland suddenly announced her determination of returning to New Orleans, and Clara sadly and tremblingly prepared herself to take leave of her lover. He came--was told by her of her mother's resolution to depart, which she was at no loss in tracing to the advice of Allington--and was made alive and happy again by Charles assuring her that he himself should start for New Orleans, although by another route, on the very day she departed. "Oh, now I know that you do love me, indeed!" said the beautiful girl, while she pressed her lover's head to her dainty bosom, and, kissing his forehead, ran out of the room. CHAPTER II. "Well, these d----d Yankees _are_ all a pack of cowards, after all, and I will never defend them again," said a young Creole, as he met Mr. Allington one morning, at the Merchants' Exchange in New Orleans. "Not fight, and after being challenged on account of as lovely a woman as Clara Harland! Why, what the devil did he take the trouble of following you all the way from New York for, if he didn't mean to _fight_ you?" "Oh, nonsense! my dear St. Maur," replied Allington, "you don't understand the laws of honor, as they are construed at the North. There, my dear fellow, every thing is regulated by law; and if a fellow treads on your corns, slanders you behind your back, or steals your mistress, the only remedy is 'an action for damages,' and, perhaps, a paragraph in a newspaper." "But what says she herself to the cowardly fellow's refusal to fight you? I suppose that now, of course, she will think no more of the puppy, and return to Allington and first love." "I know not--for I have not seen her these four days. But if this beggarly attorney's clerk document is to be believed," continued Allington, pulling a letter from his pocket, "she herself expressly commanded him not to fight."