ense weariness had
somehow come upon her, and a sudden sense of loneliness. A vague
suspicion that her money had done her an incurable wrong inspired her
with a profound distaste for the care of it. She felt cruelly hedged out
from human sympathy by her bristling possessions. "If I had had five
hundred dollars a year," she said in a frequent parenthesis, "I might
have pleased him." Hating her wealth, accordingly, and chilled by her
isolation, the temptation was strong upon her to give herself up to that
wise, brave gentleman who seemed to have adopted such a happy medium
betwixt loving her for her money and fearing her for it. Would she not
always stand between men who would represent the two extremes? She would
anticipate security by an alliance with Major Luttrel.

One evening, on presenting himself, Luttrel read these thoughts so
clearly in her eyes, that he made up his mind to speak. But his mind was
burdened with a couple of facts, of which it was necessary that he
should discharge it before it could enjoy the freedom of action which
the occasion required. In the first place, then, he had been to see
Richard Clare, and had found him suddenly and decidedly better. It was
unbecoming, however,--it was impossible,--that he should allow Gertrude
to linger over this pleasant announcement.

"I tell the good news first," he said, gravely. "I have some very bad
news, too, Miss Whittaker."

Gertrude sent him a rapid glance, "Some one has been killed," she said.

"Captain Severn has been shot," said the Major,--"shot by a guerilla."

Gertrude was silent. No answer seemed possible to that uncompromising
fact. She sat with her head on her hand, and her elbow on the table
beside her, looking at the figures on the carpet. She uttered no words
of commonplace regret; but she felt as little like giving way to serious
grief. She had lost nothing, and, to the best of her knowledge, _he_ had
lost nothing. She had an old loss to mourn,--a loss a month old, which
she had mourned as she might. To give way to passion would have been but
to impugn the solemnity of her past regrets. When she looked up at her
companion, she was pale, but she was calm, yet with a calmness upon
which a single glance of her eye directed him not inconsiderately to
presume. She was aware that this glance betrayed her secret; but in view
both of Severn's death and of the Major's attitude, such betrayal
mattered less. Luttrel had prepared to act upon her hint, a