in his mind the memory of the
white, rigid face which had not smiled on him for so long. He wanted her
to seem interested in something, for her cold apathy of manner puzzled
and alarmed him; so remembering her aunt's letter on the morning of his
departure, he spoke of it to her and said, "What shall I tell Mrs. Van
Buren for you? I shall probably see more or less of them."

"Tell nothing; prisoners send no messages," was Ethelyn's reply; and in
the dim gray of the morning the two faces looked a moment at each other
with such thoughts and passions written upon them as were pitiable
to behold.

But when Richard was fairly gone, when the tones of his voice bidding
his family good-by had ceased, and Ethelyn sat leaning on her elbow and
listening to the sound of the wheels which carried him away, such a
feeling of utter desolation and loneliness swept over her that, burying
her face in the pillows, she wept bitterer tears of remorse and regret
than she had ever wept before.

That day was a long and dreary one to all the members of the prairie
farmhouse. It was lonely there the first day of Richard's absence, but
now it was drearier than ever; and with a harsh, forbidding look upon
her face, Mrs. Markham went about her work, leaving Ethelyn entirely
alone. She did not believe her daughter-in-law was any sicker than
herself. "It was only airs," she thought, when at noon Ethelyn declined
the boiled beef and cabbage, saying just the odor of it made her sick.
"Nothing but airs and ugliness," she persisted in saying to herself, as
she prepared a slice of nice cream toast with a soft-boiled egg and cup
of fragrant black tea. Ethie did not refuse this, and was even gracious
enough to thank her mother-in-law for her extra trouble, but she did it
in such a queenly as well as injured kind of way, that Mrs. Markham felt
more aggrieved than ever, and, for a good woman, who sometimes spoke in
meeting, slammed the door considerably hard as she left the room and
went back to her kitchen, where the table had been laid ever since
Ethelyn took to eating upstairs. So long as she ate with the family Mrs.
Markham felt rather obliged to take her meals in the front room, but it
made a deal more work, and she was glad to return to her olden ways once
more. Eunice was gone off on an errand, and so she felt at liberty to
speak her mind freely to her boys as they gathered around the table.

"It is sheer ugliness," she said, "which keeps her cooped u