ot again say that I have been neglectful. I was
quite right. It is Sebastian and only Sebastian that we need fear. Here,
they are clumsy conspirators compared to him. I have been in the river
half the night, listening at the open stern window of a Reval pink to
every word they said. His Majesty can safely come to Konigsberg. Indeed,
he is better out of Dantzig. For the whole country is riddled with that
which they call patriotism, and we, treason. But I can only repeat what
His Majesty disbelieved the day before yesterday--that the heart of the
ill is Dantzig, and the venom of it Sebastian. Who he really is and
what he is about, you must find out how you can. I go forward to-day to
Gumbinnen. The enclosed letter to its address--I beg of you--if only in
acknowledgment of all that I have sacrificed."

The letter was unsigned, but the writing was the writing of Charles
Darragon, and Desiree knew what he had sacrificed--what he could never
recover.

There were two or three more letters addressed to "Dear C.," bearing no
signature, and yet written by Charles. Desiree read them carefully with
a sort of numb attention which photographed them permanently on her
memory like writing that is carved in stone upon a wall. There must be
some explanation in one of them. Who had sent them to her? Was Charles
dead?

At last she came to a sealed envelope addressed to herself by Charles.
Some other hand had copied the address from it in identical terms on
the piece of white leather. She opened and read it. It was the letter
written to her by Charles on the bank of the Kalugha river on the eve of
Borodino, and left unfinished by him. He must be dead. She prayed that
he might be.

She was alone in the room, having come down early, as was her wont, to
prepare breakfast. She heard Lisa talking with some one at the door--a
messenger, no doubt, to say that Charles was dead.

One letter still remained unread. It was in a different writing--the
writing on the white leather.

"Madame," it read, "The enclosed papers were found on the field by one
of my orderlies. One of them being addressed to you, furnishes a clue
to their owner, who must have dropped them in the hurry of the advance.
Should Captain Charles Darragon be your husband, I have the pleasure to
inform you that he was seen alive and well at the end of the day."
The writer assured Desiree of his respectful consideration, and wrote
"Surgeon" after his name.

Desiree had read the e