in the world.

"Indeed, sir, I cannot tell. A good many papers lay on the table, which
I carefully put aside; but no sealed note, that I remember."

"This is strange," muttered the General, walking up and down, stopping
to look in his coffee-cup, as if still athirst; but waving her away when
Agnes filled it again, and would have pressed it upon him.

"Remove these things, Miss Agnes, if you please--and order some one to
have the carriage ready. I must go to the city at once."

Agnes took up the salver, and moved away, hesitating, by the door, as if
she wished to speak.

"Well," said the General, a little impatiently, "is there anything I can
do?"

"The chambermaid, sir, I dare say Mrs. Harrington has no choice; and I
should be so obliged if you permitted my old nurse to have the place.
She is very capable, and I am lonely without her."

"A colored woman, is it?" asked the General, hastily.

"Yes, from the South. She is all I have left."

"Of course, let her come, if she knows her duty. I will mention it to
Mrs. Harrington."

"Thank you," said the girl, gliding softly away. "It will make me so
happy to have some one in the house that loves me."

The General answered this attack on his sympathies, with an impatient
wave of the hand. He seemed greatly disturbed--and, as the door closed,
threw himself into a chair, with something like a groan.

"Can this be true? Lina, poor little Lina, can this be real? and Ralph,
my own son. Great Heavens, it is terrible!"

He swept a hand across his forehead, distractedly. Then, starting up, as
if stung to action by some agonizing thought, he began to pace up and
down the room with a degree of excitement very unusual to him. At
length he paused by the window, and, opening the note, again read it
over and over with great anxiety. At last he went to a desk standing in
a corner of the room, and opening one secret drawer after another, drew
forth a bundle of faded letters. As he untied them, the identical
perfume that hung about the note he had been reading, stole around him;
and, turning paler and paler, as if the odor made him faint, he began to
read the letters, one after another, comparing them first with the note,
and then with a key to the cypher in which they were all written, that
he took from another compartment of the desk.

At last he drew a deep breath, and wearily folded the papers up.

"This is plausible, and it may be true," he said, locking his hands on
the