"Oh! exact a parole from a woman?"
"Good gracious, why shouldn't I! As for you,--ha!--I'd as soon turn a
commissioned rebel officer loose in my camp unparoled as you."
"Then take my parole! I give it! you have it! I'll take the chances."
"And the dances?" asked the Major.
"Very good," said the General, "you are now on parole. See the lady
conducted to Squire Gilmer's, Major. And now, Miss--eh,--day after
to-morrow morning I shall either pass you beyond my lines or else send
you to Baton Rouge. Good-day." When Charlotte found herself alone in a
room of the Gilmer house she lay down upon the bed staring and sighing
with dismay; she was bound by a parole! If within its limit of time
Oliver should appear, "It will mean Baton Rouge for me!" she cried under
her breath, starting up and falling back again; "Baton Rouge, New
Orleans, Ship Island!" She was in as feminine a fright as though she had
never braved a danger. Suddenly a new distress overwhelmed her:
if--if--someone to deliver her should come--"Oh Heaven! I am
paroled!--bound hand and foot by my insane parole!"
Softly she sprang from the bed, paced the floor, went to the window,
seemed to look out upon the landscape; but in truth she was looking in
upon herself. There she saw a most unaccountable tendency for her
judgment--after some long overstrain--momentarily, but all at once, to
swoon, collapse, turn upside down like a boy's kite and dart to earth;
an impulse--while fancying she was playing the supremely courageous or
generous or clever part--suddenly to surrender the key of the situation,
the vital point in whatever she might be striving for. "Ah me, ah me!
why did I give my parole?"
At the close of the next day--"Walter," said the General as the
chief-of-staff entered his tent glittering in blue and gold,--"oh, thud
devil!--you going to that dance?"