t that he had had
yellow fever years before in Louisiana, and that a ball which had
once been fired at him had gone clean through his body without
taking his life.

"What was the date of the evening on which he told you he had placed
money in bank for you?"

"April the twenty-ninth."

Two days after the Jeffrey-Moore wedding!

Convinced now that his departure from town was something more than
a coincidence, I pursued my inquiries and found that he had been
received, just as she had said, into the First Volunteer Corps under
Colonel Wood. This required influence. Whose was the influence?
It took me some time to find out, but after many and various
attempts, most of which ended in failure, I succeeded in learning
that the man who had worked and obtained for him a place in this
favored corps was FRANCIS JEFFREY.

XVIII

IN THE GRASS

I did some tall thinking that night. I remembered that this man had
held some conversation with the Jeffreys at their carriage door
previous to their departure from the Moore house, and found myself
compelled to believe that only a matter of importance to themselves
as well as to him would have detained them at such a minute. Oh,
that Tampa were not so far off or that I had happened on this clue
earlier! But Tampa was at that moment a far prospect for me and I
could only reason from such facts as I had been able to collect in
Washington.

Fixing my mind now on Mrs. Jeffrey, I asked the cause of the many
caprices which had marked her conduct on her wedding morning. Why
had she persisted in dressing alone, and what occasioned the
absorption which led to her ignoring all appeals at her door at a
time when a woman is supposed to be more than usually gracious? But
one answer suggested itself. Her heart was not in her marriage, and
that last hour of her maidenhood had been an hour of anguish and
struggle. Perhaps she not only failed to love Francis Jeffrey, but
loved some other man. This seemed improbable, but things as strange
as this have happened in our complex society and no reckoning can be
made with a woman's fancy. If this was so--and what other theory
would better or even so well account for her peculiar behavior both
then and afterward? The hour usually given by brides to dress and
gladsome expectation was with her one of farewell to past hopes and
an unfortunate, if not passionate, attachment. No wonder that she
wished to be alone. No wonder that interrup