d suffered. At the hospital, then, like Lacy, he too had
fallen in love with Miss Fanny Glen.

By rights the hero--not of this story, perhaps, but the real hero--was
much the handsomer of the two. It is always so in romances; and
romances--good ones, that is--are the reflex of life. Such a
combination of manly beauty with unshakable courage and reckless
audacity was not often seen as Lacy exhibited. Sempland was homely.
Lacy had French and Irish blood in him, and he showed it. Sempland was
a mixture of sturdy Dutch and English stock.

Yet if women found Lacy charming they instinctively depended upon
Sempland. There was something thoroughly attractive in Sempland, and
Fanny Glen unconsciously fell under the spell of his strong
personality. The lasting impression which the gayety and passionate
abandon of Lacy could not make, Sempland had effected, and the girl was
already powerfully under his influence--stubbornly resistant
nevertheless.

She was fond of both men. She loved Lacy for the dangers he had passed,
and Sempland because she could not help it; which marks the relative
quality of her affections. Which one she loved the better until the
moment at which the story opens she could not have told.

Nobody knew anything about Fanny Glen. At least there were only two
facts concerning her in possession of the general public. These,
however, were sufficient. One was that she was good. The men in the
hospital called her an angel. The other was that she was beautiful. The
women of the city could not exactly see why the men thought so, which
was confirmation strong as proofs of Holy Writ!

She had come to Charleston at the outbreak of the war accompanied by an
elderly woman of unexceptional manner and appearance who called herself
Miss Lucy Glen, and described herself as Miss Fanny Glen's aunt. They
had taken a house in the fashionable quarter of the city--they were not
poor at any rate--and had installed themselves therein with their
slaves.

They made no attempt to enter into the social life of the town and only
became prominent when Charleston began to feel acutely the hardships of
the war which it had done more to promote than any other place in the
land.

Then Fanny Glen showed her quality. A vast hospital was established,
and the young women of the city volunteered their services.

The corps of nurses was in a state of constant fluxion. Individuals
came and went. Some of them married patients, some of them die