r. Mrs. Truscott had arrived
at the conclusion before ten o'clock that night that she was the most
miserable woman on the face of the globe.

Jack's letter arriving the day previous was as kind, as well expressed,
and as thoughtful a screed as ever mortal husband penned, but, being
like other husbands, only mortal, he had failed to bring about the exact
effect which was intended. Whether this was his fault or hers could not
be determined entirely by an inspection of a copy of the letter, since
letters may be read with a thousand different inflections, and the most
passionate heart-offering be made to sound like a torrent of sarcasm.
Perhaps it is neither here nor there whose fault it was. Grace read the
letter with burning self-reproach. It was the second time he had had
reason to find fault with her. True, she had acted as she supposed for
the best, and after consultation with Mrs. Stannard. Mrs. Stannard's
letter was to go by the next mail and explain the whole thing to the
major, who, if he deemed advisable, would carry everything to Truscott;
but, as we have seen, that explanatory letter had never reached the
regiment. It, with bags full of other letters, was lying in the wagons
at Goose Creek, while the --th was on the chase away to the Yellowstone,
and Grace had the misery of believing that Jack's last thought of her as
he rode off to battle was that she had had some sentimental scene with
Ray, had been surprised in the midst of it, and had concealed it from
him. She had spent a distracted afternoon, had written Jack page after
page, in which amid tears and kisses she had recorded her determination
never to let another man see her alone an instant, never to receive a
note of any kind from Ray or anybody else, never to _speak_ to a man if
she could help it; she hated them all,--all but one, whom she had
wronged and deceived, and whom she adored and worshipped now, and heaven
only knows what all! She felt comforted somehow when she had slipped
that letter into the box at the adjutant's office late that night, and
had gone so soundly asleep that she might not have known of the murder
until morning but for Marion. And then, that next afternoon,--that
_very_ next afternoon, after she had written all her impulsive,
wifelike, loving promises to Jack, what should come but a note from Ray
to be delivered privately to her. Let any young wife of less than a
year's disenchantment put herself in Mrs. Truscott's place and say wh