"There is no reason for further delay," Lloyd insisted. "I _have_ been a _débutante_ these--four--years!" she suggested demurely. Lloyd submitted that he hoped there were no objections to him in Colonel Fisher's estimation. "Except such as are insuperable--you'll never be any better," suggested Millie. It would be undesirable, even dangerous, Lloyd argued, to send her back to her home in Roanoke City with a flag of truce in the present state of conflict. "But it is not at all dull there--" she interrupted vivaciously. "Some very nice Yankee officers are in society there--several old friends of yours, papa. Colonel Monette and Lieutenant-Colonel Blake of the regular army--old classmates of yours. And some others whom you don't know--Captain Baynell, who is _very_ handsome, and Colonel Ashley--he belongs to the volunteers; he is most agreeable and highly thought of, and oh--of course Lieutenant Seymour--oh, it is _not_ dull there!" Lloyd looked at her in blank dismay, and the blank dismay on the face of her father was nearly as marked, but the latter's anxiety was due to a different cause--what would his wife decide if she were here!--for every one who knew the Fishers was well aware that Guy Fisher, albeit a man of much force in his own domain of business or military life, "sung mighty small" in all matters in which his wife had concern. Lloyd rallied to the attack and continued to explain that he had orders detaching him, showing that he would be stationary, in command of a fort in the far South for some time, and that Millie would be in a position to be comfortable. "But can I ride horseback there?" she stipulated. "I have just found out what I can do in that line!" She liked to describe this conversation afterward. Her lover was the most serious and literal-minded of men, anxious and doubtful, and her father the prey of vacillation and indecision. They looked alternately at her and at each other with an expression of startled bewilderment as she spoke, seeking to adjust what she had said with their own knowledge of the facts. The flying column was once more in motion, and one evening, after a considerable distance southward had been accomplished, the leave both of Colonel Fisher and Colonel Lloyd being close upon expiration and decision exigent, the doubting, anxious father gave his consent.