d with
them, but Fanny Glen neither married nor died--she abided!

Not merely because she stayed while others did not, but perhaps on
account of her innate capacity, as well as her tactful tenderness, she
became the chief of the women attached to the hospital. Many a sick
soldier lived to love her. Many another, more sorely stricken, died
blessing her.

In Charleston she was regarded as next in importance to the general who
commanded the troops and who, with his ships, his forts, his guns, and
his men, had been for two years fighting off the tremendous assaults
that were hurled upon the city from the Union ironclads and ships far
out to sea. It was a point of honor to take, or to hold, Charleston,
and the Confederates held it till 1865!

Fanny Glen was a privileged character, therefore, and could go anywhere
and do anything, within the lines.

Under other circumstances there would have been a thorough inquiry by
the careful inhabitants of the proud, strict Southern city into her
family relationships; but the war was a great leveller, people were
taken at their real value when trouble demonstrated it, and few
questions were asked. Those that were asked about Fanny Glen were not
answered. It made little difference, then.

Toward the close of 1863, however, there was an eclipse in the general
hospital, for Fanny Glen fell ill.

She was not completely recovered, early in 1864, when she had the
famous interview with Rhett Sempland, but there was not the slightest
evidence of invalidism about her as she confronted him that afternoon
in February.

Wounded pride, outraged dignity, burning indignation, supplied strength
and spirit enough for a regiment of convalescents.

The difference between the two culminated in a disturbance which might
aptly be called cyclonic, for Sempland on nearly the first occasion
that he had been permitted to leave the hospital had repaired to Fanny
Glen's house and there had repeated, standing erect and looking down
upon her bended head, what he had said so often with his eyes and once
at least with his lips, from his bed in the ward: that he loved her and
wanted her for his wife.

Pleasant thing it was for her to hear, too, she could not but admit.

Yet if Fanny Glen had not rejected him, neither had she accepted him.

She had pleaded for time, she had hesitated, and would have been lost,
had Sempland been as wise as he was brave. Perhaps he wasn't quite
master of himself on account of