She spent much time alone in her room, seated at a southern window that commanded a view of the street leading up from the steamboat landing, the little bundle of letters and the faded rose held caressingly in her hands. It happened that no fugitives came to their door during this time, or she might have suffered sudden awakening from her dream. As it was, she thought of nothing but the coming of her lover and her surrender to his suit. Now and then her reverie strayed on into the future and she pictured their life together in Jeff’s beautiful home at Fairmount, with the slaves all freed and giving faithful service for wages. Staying so much apart and living in her own rose-colored dreams, the strenuous enthusiasms of the recent months, even her immediate surroundings, seemed to lose their reality. The same emotional force in her character which enabled her to enter with such zeal into the anti-slavery work and to be so absorbed by it that she could sacrifice her love upon its altar made it possible now,--indeed, made it inevitable,--when she had once given up to the opposing influence, that she should be swept by its forceful current to the other extreme. A new expression came into her face. Her dreams drew a soft and tender veil across the usually intent and serious look of her eyes, and all her countenance glowed with her inner happiness. Her mother saw the change in expression and demeanor with inward delight. For when it came to the affections Mrs. Ware was able to interpret her daughter’s feelings and actions with more surety than in matters of the mind and conscience. Charlotte, in whose heart rankled resentment against her father and sister for their anti-slavery views, their Underground work, and the reproach that had been administered to her, noted the new look on Rhoda’s face and said bitterly to herself: “Yes, I suppose she’s getting hold of a whole pack of niggers to steal and send on to Canada!” She told herself petulantly that she was no longer of any consequence in their home and began to feel an angry sense of injury at the bonds tacitly imposed upon her conduct by the ideas and actions of her father and sister. She longed for some happening that would take her away and put her into surroundings where she could feel her accustomed sense of freedom and personal importance. And so, the wish being father to the conviction, Charlotte felt every day more and more sure that Jefferson Delavan would soon reappear, that Rhoda would refuse him again, and that then she could capture his repulsed heart and speedily win from him a proposal of marriage. She would hold him off a little while, and make him all the more eager--that would be easy enough--and when at last she did consent, he would of course want an early marriage, and to that, too, she would reluctantly consent--“Oh, the sooner the better,” her thoughts broke into sudden storm, “so that I can get away from this black abolition hole!”