spurred heels on the front piazza.

The captain stepped forth into the hallway. A trooper stood at the front
door, his hand lifted in salute. Another, in saddle, and holding the
reins of his comrade's horse, was at the gate. A rustle of feminine
drapery swept downward from the upper floor, and Dade glanced up, half
dreading to see Esther's face. But it was his wife who peered over the
balustrade. "I shall be down in ten minutes," she said, in low tone.
"Esther is sleeping at last. How did--he--seem this morning?"

"Sleeping, too, but only fitfully. Dr. Waller is here," and then Dade
would have ended the talk. He did not wish to speak further of Field or
his condition. But she called again, low-toned, yet dominant, as is many
a wife in and out of the army.

"Surely you are not letting the general start with only two men!"

"No, he goes by and by." And again Dade would have escaped to the
piazza, but once again she held him.

"Then where are you sending these?"

"After Mr. Hay. He--made an early start--not knowing perhaps, the
general was coming."

"Start!" she cried, all excitement now. "Start!--Start for where?" and
the dressing sacque in aspen-like agitations came in full view at the
head of the stairs.

"Rawlins, I suppose. I don't know what it means."

"But _I_ do!" exclaimed his better half, in emotion uncontrollable. "_I_
do! It means that she has _made_ him,--that _she_ has gone, too--I mean
Nanette Flower!"

CHAPTER XV

A WOMAN'S PLOT

Woman's intuition often far outstrips the slower mental process of the
other sex. The mother who has to see a beloved daughter's silent
suffering, well knowing another girl to be, however indirectly, the
cause of it, sees all manner of other iniquities in that other girl.
Kind, charitable and gentle was Mrs. Dade, a wise mother, too, as well
as most loving, but she could look with neither kindness nor charity on
Miss Flower. She had held her peace; allowed no word of censure or
criticism to escape her when the women were discussing that young lady;
but all the more vehement was her distrust, because thus pent up and
repressed. With the swiftness of feminine thought, for no man had yet
suspected, she fathomed the secret of the trader's sudden going; and,
carried away by the excitement of the moment and the belief that none
but her husband could hear, she had made that startling announcement.
And her intuition was unerring. Nanette Flower was indeed gone.

Y