received a formal reply, regretting that the authorities at
Washington still found it necessary to put this kind of risk and burden
on the army in the field, but that the order emanated from the highest
authority, and must be strictly obeyed. At the bottom of the page was a
characteristic line in pencil in the general's own hand--"Not the kind
that is dangerous."

A flush mounted Brant's cheeks, as if it contained not only a hidden,
but a personal significance. He had thought of his own wife!

Singularly enough, a day or two later, at dinner, the conversation
turned upon the intense sectional feeling of Southern women, probably
induced by their late experiences. Brant, at the head of the table, in
his habitual abstraction, was scarcely following the somewhat excited
diction of Colonel Strangeways, one of his staff.

"No, sir," reiterated that indignant warrior, "take my word for it! A
Southern woman isn't to be trusted on this point, whether as a sister,
sweetheart, or wife. And when she is trusted, she's bound to get the
better of the man in any of those relations!"

The dead silence that followed, the ominous joggle of a glass at the
speaker's elbow, the quick, sympathetic glance that Brant instinctively
felt was directed at his own face, and the abrupt change of subject,
could not but arrest his attention, even if he had overlooked the
speech. His face, however, betrayed nothing. It had never, however,
occurred to him before that his family affairs might be known--neither
had he ever thought of keeping them a secret. It seemed so purely a
personal and private misfortune, that he had never dreamed of its having
any public interest. And even now he was a little ashamed of what he
believed was his sensitiveness to mere conventional criticism, which,
with the instinct of a proud man, he had despised.

He was not far wrong in his sardonic intuition of the effect of his
prohibition upon Miss Faulkner's feelings. Certainly that young lady,
when not engaged in her mysterious occupation of arranging her uncle's
effects, occasionally was seen in the garden, and in the woods beyond.
Although her presence was the signal for the "oblique" of any lounging
"shoulder strap," or the vacant "front" of a posted sentry, she seemed
to regard their occasional proximity with less active disfavor. Once,
when she had mounted the wall to gather a magnolia blossom, the chair by
which she had ascended rolled over, leaving her on the wall. A