uce Mr. Stanley to
defer the trip till autumn. But he would not ask. She would surely tell
him at the last, he thought. She ought, at least, to trust him as a
brother, and say to him:

"Hugh, I am engaged to Mr. Stanley, and when you return, if you are long
gone, I shall probably not be here."

But she said to him no such thing, and only the whiteness of her face
and the occasional quivering of her long eyelashes, showed that she felt
at all, as at an early hour next morning she presided at the breakfast
prepared for the travelers. There was no tremor in her voice, no
hesitancy in her manner, and a stranger could not have told which of the
young men before her held her heart in his possession, or which had kept
her wakeful the entire night, revolving the propriety of telling him ere
he left that the Golden Hair he loved so much was willing to be his.

"Perhaps he will speak to me. I'll wait," was the final decision, as,
rising from her sleepless pillow, she sat down in the gray dawn of the
morning and penned a hasty note, which she thrust into his hand at
parting, little dreaming how long a time would intervene ere they would
meet again.

He had not said to her or to his mother that he might join the army,
gathering so fast from every Northern city and hamlet; only Sam knew
this, and so the mother longing for her daughter was pleased rather than
surprised at his abrupt departure, bidding him Godspeed, and lading him
with messages of love for Adah and the little boy. Alice, too, tried to
smile as she said good-by, but it died upon her lips and a tear trembled
on her cheek, when Hugh dropped the little hand he never expected to
hold again just as he held it then.

Feeling intuitively that Irving and Alice would rather say their parting
words alone, Hugh drew his mother with him as he advanced into the midst
of the sobbing, howling negroes assembled to see him off. But Alice had
nothing to say which she would not have said in his presence. Irving
Stanley understood better than Hugh, and he merely raised her cold hand
to his lips, saying as he did so:

"Just this once; I shall never kiss it again."

He was in the carriage when Hugh came up, and Alice stood leaning
against one of the tall pillars, a deep flush now upon her cheek, and
tears filling her soft blue eyes. In another moment the carriage was
rolling from the yard, neither Irving nor Hugh venturing to look back,
and both as by mutual consent avoiding the men