ce of her household duties, the innocent
Mistress Thankful noticed, under her downcast penitential eyelids, that
the eyes of the officer followed her intently. And thereat she fell
unconsciously to imitating him; and so they eyed each other furtively
like cats, and rubbed themselves along the walls of rooms and passages
when they met, lest they should seem designedly to come near each
other, and enacted the gravest and most formal of genuflexions,
courtesies, and bows, when they accidentally DID meet. And just at the
close of the second day, as the elegant Major Van Zandt was feeling
himself fast becoming a drivelling idiot and an awkward country booby,
the arrival of a courier from headquarters saved that gentleman his
self-respect forever.

Mistress Thankful was in her sitting-room when he knocked at her door.
She opened it in sudden, conscious trepidation.

"I ask pardon for intruding, Mistress Thankful Blossom," he said
gravely; "but I have here"--he held out a pretentious document--"a
letter for you from headquarters. May I hope that it contains good
news,--the release of your father.--and that it relieves you from my
presence, and an espionage which I assure you cannot be more unpleasant
to you than it has been to myself."

As he entered the room, Thankful had risen to her feet with the full
intention of delivering to him her little set apology; but, as he ended
his speech, she looked at him blankly, and burst out crying.

Of course he was in an instant at her side, and holding her cold little
hand. Then she managed to say, between her tears, that she had been
wanting to make an apology to him; that she had wanted to say ever
since she arrived that she had been rude, very rude, and that she knew
he never could forgive her; that she had been trying to say that she
never could forget his gentle forbearance: "only," she added, suddenly
raising her tear-fringed brown lids to the astonished man, "YOU
WOULDN'T EVER LET ME!"

"Dear Mistress Thankful," said the major, in conscience-stricken
horror, "if I have made myself distant to you, believe me it was only
because I feared to intrude upon your sorrow. I really--dear Mistress
Thankful--I--"

"When you took all the pains to go round the hall instead of through
the dining-room, lest I should ask you to forgive me," sobbed Mistress
Thankful, "I thought--you--must--hate me, and preferred to--"

"Perhaps this letter may mitigate your sorrow, Mistress Thankful,"