th.

It did not matter now if the garden gate creaked on its hinges, or if
watching eyes from the piazza saw the glossy leaves stirring when no wind
could shake them--nothing mattered at all to these people now.

She put all the letters back in the bureau, carefully closing them in the
secret drawer.

CHAPTER VII

"Miss Pinckney," said Phyl that night as they sat at supper, "when you
left me this afternoon in Juliet's room I stopped to look at the books and
things and when I opened the bureau I touched a spring by accident and a
little panel fell out and I found a lot of old letters behind it. It was
wrong of me to go meddling about and I thought I ought to tell you."

"Old letters," said Miss Pinckney, "you don't say--what were they about?"

"I read one or two," said the girl. "I'd never, never have dreamed of
touching them only--only they were hers--they were to him."

"Rupert?"

"Yes."

"Love letters?"

"Yes."

Miss Pinckney sighed.

"He kept all her letters," said she, "and they came back to her after he
was killed. He was killed here in Charleston, at Fort Sumter, in the war;
they brought him across here and carried him on a stretcher and she--well,
well, it's all done with and let it rest, but it is strange that those
letters should have fallen into your hands."

"Why, strange?"

"Why?" burst out Miss Pinckney. "Why I have dusted that old bureau inside
and out a hundred times, and pulled out the drawers and pushed them in and
it never shewed sign of having anything in it but emptiness, and you don't
do more'n look at it and you find those letters. It's just as if the thing
had deceived me. I don't mind, and I don't want to see them, they weren't
intended for other eyes than his and hers--and maybe yours since they were
shewn you like that."

"Was it wrong of me to look at them?" asked Phyl. "I never would have done
it only--only--Oh, I don't know, I somehow felt she wouldn't mind. She
seemed like a sister--I would never dream of looking at another person's
letters but she did not seem like another person. I can't explain. It was
just as though the letters were my own--just exactly as though they were
my own when I found them in my hands."

Phyl was talking with her eyes fixed before her as though she were looking
across some great distance.

Miss Pinckney gave a little shiver, then supper being over she rose from
the table and led the way from the room.

Richard Pinckney had dined w