neighborhood gossip is."

So, after a friendly talk in which the poor lady cried a great deal and
besought Jack's good-will for her darling William, if ever he were
luckless enough to be captured, the note was written and dispatched to
the Atterburys, whose city house was near the capital square. The
messenger returned a half-hour later, reporting the family out of town;
that they had taken the major to their country-place near Williamsburg,
on the banks of the James. The messenger had given the letter to the
housekeeper, who said that it would go out an hour later with the mail
sent daily to the family.

"Williamsburg is two hours' ride on the train," Mrs. Raines explained,
"and we sha'n't hear from them until to-morrow."

Jack said nothing; his mind was on his mother and the misery she must be
enduring. He turned restlessly on his pillow that night, and woke
feverish in the morning. Mrs. Raines now took as much pains to keep
people who called from seeing her hero as she had before put herself out
to display the invalid. Even the doctor, calling about nine o'clock, was
sent away on some pretext, and the poor lady waited with an anxiety,
almost as poignant as Jack's own, for the response to his note. About
noon it came. Mrs. Raines went to the door herself, not daring to trust
the colored girl, who had lavished untold pains on Jack's linen and the
manual part of his care. Jack heard low voices in the hallway, then on
the stairs, and he knew some one had come.

"Here is Miss Atterbury sent to fetch you, lieutenant," Mrs. Raines
said, now very much relieved, and impressed, too, by the powerful
friends her dangerous _protege_ was able to summon so promptly by
a line.

"You are Rosalind?" Jack said, smiling at a pair of the brownest and
most bewitching eyes fixed soberly on him. "I should have known you if I
had met you in the street, although you were a small girl when I saw
you last."

"You needn't take much credit for that, sir, since Vincent probably had
my portrait in all his coat-pockets and his room frescoed with
them--it's a trick of his. So you needn't pretend that it was family
likeness--I know better. Vincent has all the good looks of the family,
and I have all the good qualities."

"That's why you've come to console the afflicted?"

"Yes, duty--you know how disagreeable that is. Vincent declared he would
come himself, if I didn't, and mamma wouldn't hear of your being moved
by servants alone, so I am h