e now. My jealous one, my fiery sweetheart, do you not realize
now that I was wise in showing her so much attention? A thousand kisses.
Come what may, they cannot rob us of the past. HOWARD.

"I fear you heard and were alarmed by the shots just after I left you.
All was quiet when I got home."

It was some seconds before Chester could control himself sufficiently to
speak. "I wish to God the bullet had gone through his heart!" he said.

"It has gone through mine,--through mine! This will kill her mother.
Chester," cried the colonel, springing suddenly to his feet, "she must
not know it. She must not dream of it. I tell you it would stretch her
in the dust, _dead_, for she loves that child with all her strength,
with all her being, I believe, for it is two mother-loves in one. She
had a son, older than Alice by several years, her first-born,--her
glory, he was,--but the boy inherited the father's passionate and
impulsive nature. He loved a girl utterly beneath him, and would have
married her when he was only twenty. There is no question that he loved
her well, for he refused to give her up, no matter what his father
threatened. They tried to buy her off, and she scorned them. Then they
had a letter written, while he was sent abroad under pretence that he
should have his will if he came back in a year unchanged. By Jove, it
seems she was as much in love as he, and it broke her heart. She went
off and died somewhere, and he came back ahead of time because her
letters had ceased, and found it all out. There was an awful scene. He
cursed them both,--father and mother,--and left her senseless at his
feet; and from that day to this they never heard of him, never could get
the faintest report. It broke Renwick,--killed him, I guess, for he died
in two years; and as for the mother, you would not think that a woman so
apparently full of life and health was in desperate danger. She had some
organic trouble with the heart years ago, they tell her, and this
experience has developed it so that now any great emotion or sudden
shock is perilous. Do you not see how doubly fearful this comes to us?
Chester, I have weathered one awful storm, but I'm old and broken now.
This--this beats me. Tell me what to do."

The captain was silent a few moments. He was thinking intently.

"Does she know you have that letter?" he asked.

Maynard shook his head: "I looked back as I came away. She was in the
parlor, singing softly t