Although she talked so strongly she did not seem more than half in earnest. A half smile lurked around her lips of deep rose-color, and her bright, almond-shaped black eyes sparkled with interest rather than with passion. By the way, she was not a venerable personage, and not properly Lillie's aunt, but only the widow of the late Mrs. Ravenel's brother, not more than thirty-three years of age and still decidedly pretty. Her complexion was dark, pale and a little too thick, but it was relieved by the jet black of her regular eye-brows and of her masses of wavy hair. Her face was oval, her nose, straight, her lips thin but nicely modeled, her chin little and dimpled; her expression was generally gay and coquettish, but amazingly variable and capable of running through a vast gamut of sentiments, including affection, melancholy and piety. Though short she was well built, with a deep, healthy chest, splendid arms and finely turned ankles. She did not strike a careless observer as handsome, but she bore close examination with advantage. The Doctor instinctively suspected her; did not think her a safe woman to have about, although he could allege no overtly wicked act against her; and had brought up Lillie to be shy of her society. Nevertheless it was impossible just now to keep her at a distance, for he would probably be much away from home, and it was necessary to leave his daughter with some one. In politics, if not in other things, Mrs. Larue was as double-faced as Janus. To undoubted secessionists she talked bitterly, coarsely, scandalously against the northerners. If advisable she could go on about Picayune Butler, Beast Butler, Traitor Farragut, Vandal Yankees, wooden-nutmeg heroes, mudsills, nasty tinkers, nigger-worshippers, amalgamationists, &c. &c. from nine o'clock in the morning when she got up, till midnight when she went to bed. At the same time she could call in a quiet way on the mayor or the commanding General to wheedle protection out of them by playing her fine eyes and smiling and flattering. Knowing the bad social repute of the Ravenels as Unionists, she would not invite them into her own roomy house; but she was pleased to have them in their own dwelling next door, because they might at a pinch serve her as friends at the Butler court. On the principle of justice to Satan, I must say that she was no fair sample of the proud and stiff-necked slaveholding aristocracy of Louisiana. Neither was she one of the patriotic and puritan few who shared the Doctor's sympathies and principles. As she came of an old French Creole family, and her husband had been a lawyer of note and an ultra southern politician, she belonged, like the Ravenels, to the patrician order of New Orleans, only that she was counted among the Soulé set, while her relatives had gone over to the Barker faction. She had not been reduced to beggary by the advent of the Yankees; her estate was not in the now worthless