“Except me,” added Isabey quietly, and then could have struck himself for saying it. But he was only human after all, and he loved Angela with a strength and passion which amazed even himself. Angela, as the case always was when Isabey made betrayal of himself, flushed deeply and lowered her eyes, and then after a moment recovered herself and said coldly: “And Mr. Lyddon. I have always told Mr. Lyddon everything since I was a little child.” “Yes, and Mr. Lyddon,” Isabey said, composedly. Angela’s involuntary readiness to pour out her heart to him always touched him as nothing else on earth had ever done, but she likewise commanded his admiration and respect by the steadiness with which she upheld the letter of the law. Isabey often thought that no woman of forty could have maintained the attitude of loyalty to her husband with more tenacity and dignity than this girl of barely twenty. The garrison might be weak, but the citadel was strong. Just then Lyddon entered unexpectedly, and Angela, as if to prove she had no separate confidences with Isabey, told Lyddon the story. Lyddon expressed no surprise. “You blessed Southerners,” he said, “have all along expected water to run uphill. You may make a human being a chattel legally, but you cannot make him so actually.” “Then would you make them citizens?” asked Angela, tartly; and Lyddon good-humoredly taking up the cudgels, a warm discussion followed on the question of slavery. Angela, like many Southern women, was familiar with the dialectics of the question and was able to make a clever defense of a doubtful position. Isabey listened in amused silence, watching Angela’s usually soft manner growing more excited, her eyes becoming brilliant, and the quickness of her intelligence in meeting Lyddon’s arguments. The discussion was ended by Lyddon’s saying, laughing: “Come now, little girl, you’ve said all you know on the subject and have done better than a good many orators on the hustings. However, I only discuss it with you because I can’t talk about it to anyone else in the county except with Captain Isabey here. The ribbon around your neck is all awry, and your hair is tumbling down just as it always does when you get warm in argument. What a nice arguing wife Neville will have!” “I shan’t argue with Neville,” replied Angela in her sweetest voice, and looking straight at Isabey. “Neville knows more than anyone in the world. He’s always right and always has been. I thought so from the time I could first remember, and I haven’t changed my opinion.” “That’s the way I shall wish my wife to talk when I have one,” was Lyddon’s rejoinder, a possibility so preposterous that both Isabey and Angela laughed at the mere suggestion.