I have no hope, should I become too much oppressed by lack of sleep, except to follow instructions, and cast you overboard somewhere below Kentucky!" "You ask me not to attempt any escape ?" "Yes." "Why, I would agree to as much as that.

It is, as you say, a matter of indifference to me whether I leave the boat at Cairo or at some point farther westward.

Of course I would return to Washington as soon as I escaped from bondage." "Excellent, Madam! Now, please add that you will not attempt to communicate with any person on the boat or on shore." "No; that I will not agree to as a condition." "Then still you leave it very hard for me." She only smiled at him again, her slow, deliberate smile; yet there was in it no trace of hardness or sarcasm.

Keen as her mind assuredly was, as she smiled she seemed even younger, perhaps four or five and twenty at most.

With those little dimples now rippling frankly into view at the corners of her mouth, she was almost girlish in her expression, although the dark eyes above, long-lashed, eloquent, able to speak a thousand tongues into shame, showed better than the small curving lips the well-poised woman of the world.
Captain Edward Carlisle, soldier as he was, martinet as he was, felt a curious sensation of helplessness seize upon him as he met her, steady gaze, her alluring smile; he could not tell what this prisoner might do.