General Wilmer Wilberford had maintained a consistent attitude since the close of the Civil War. He was willing to acknowledge the “cause” was lost and that the conquerors and their descendants be treated with consideration, but his very nature rebelled at the thought of any real intimacy with those of the North. He had been much perturbed during his daughter’s last year at a “finishing school for young gentlewomen” by her letters relating to a growing friendship between herself and Priscilla Waltham, a young girl whose people were prominent socially in Boston, and at the close of the school term, laid up by an attack of rheumatism, he had given a grudging consent to his little Virginia spending a few weeks with Priscilla’s family before returning home. At the end of the visit Virginia found herself listening with beating heart to Jack Waltham’s proposal of marriage and a wire to her father threw that gentleman into a fit of rage not equaled since ‘65. He wired a sharp command to return home at once and as for husbands, he had one picked out for her in the person of his old childhood companion whose father owned the neighboring plantation. He also refused absolutely to allow Mr. Jack Waltham to enter his home or even to accompany his daughter on the journey to her home. Jack’s sister, Priscilla, while hurt by the attitude of Virginia’s father toward her brother, decided to accompany the little Southerner to her Virginia home and Jack, driven to desperation at the thought of losing sight of Virginia, decided and won the girls over to a daring expedient by which he would at least be able to be near his sweetheart while she endeavored to win her father over to a union with the North. Priscilla’s clothes and a blonde wig and much torture of Jack’s masculine, if slim figure, resulted in a young lady of rather alarming height and breadth, but none the less at least “Passing fair.” Jack’s stay at the Wilberford mansion was lengthened far beyond the original time planned and he and Virginia found themselves involved in one complication after another until at last fate intervened in a most striking manner and Virginia’s father was won over.