Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/497

 a triumphal procession to the Capital. The General was bubbling over with pride in the handsome appearance the bride and groom made, and tried to outdo himself in kindliness toward Gaston.

"Come to think it over, Governor," he said to him after the inauguration, "it was a brave thing in my little girl marching into that jail alone and marrying her lover in a prison, wasn't it? By George, she's a chip off the old block! I don't care if the world does know it!"

"General, that was the bravest thing a woman could do. She is the heroine of the drama. I play second part."

They did not wait long for the people to know it. At four o'clock in the afternoon an extra appeared with a startling account of the fact that the Governor's beautiful bride had braved the world and secretly married him when his fortunes were at ebb-tide, and he was a prisoner in the Asheville jail.

That night when Sallie entered the Banquet Hall of the Governor's Mansion, leaning proudly on Gaston's arm, she was greeted with an outburst of homage and deep feeling she had never dreamed of receiving. When the Governor acknowledged the applause of his name, he bowed to his bride, not to the crowd.

The Preacher rose to respond to the toast, "The Master and the Mistress of the Governor's Mansion," and seemed to pay no attention to the Governor, but turning to Sallie, he said,

"To the queenly daughter of the South, who had eyes to see a glorious manhood behind prison bars, the nobility to stoop from wealth to poverty and transform a jail into a palace with the beauty of her face and the splendour of her love—to her, the heroine who inspired Charles Gaston with power to mould a million wills in his, change the current of history, and become the Governor of the