etly now."

"Yes, I want very much to see him, as soon as he is well enough to talk,
and, if the young lady should be well enough to come out into the parlor
this afternoon or take the air on the piazza, will you let me know?"

The nurse's smiles of assent are beaming. Whether she, too, has seen
that photograph Abbot cannot tell. That she has had the feminine
keenness of vision in sighting a possible romance is beyond question.
The secret-service official is at Abbot's side as he turns back from the
door.

"I shall see you again, perhaps to-morrow," he says; "meantime there is
a good deal for us to do," and before the nurse has reached the sick
man's door, she is politely accosted by the same urbane young man, and
is by no means sorry to stop and talk with somebody about her sad-faced
old patient and his wonderfully pretty daughter.

It was Abbot's purpose to devote a little time that afternoon to
answering the letter received but yesterday from Miss Winthrop. It needs
no telling--the fact that there had never been a love-affair in their
engagement; and no one can greatly blame a woman who is dissatisfied
with a loveless match. Viva Winthrop was not so unattractive as to be
destitute of all possibility of winning adorers. Indeed, there was
strong ground for believing that she fully realized the bliss of having
at least one man's entire devotion. Whatsoever evil traits may have
cropped out in Mr. Hollins's army career, _she_ had seen nothing of
them, and knew only his thoughtful and lover-like attentions while they
were abroad, and his assiduous wooing on his return. Paul Abbot had
never asked for her love--indeed, he had hardly mentioned the word as
incidental to their engagement. Nevertheless, yielding to what she had
long been taught to consider her fate, she had accepted the family
arrangement--and him--and was the subject of incessant and enthusiastic
congratulation. Abbot's gallant service and distinguished character as
an officer had won the hearty admiration of all the circle in which she
lived and moved and had her being, and she was thought an enviable girl
to have won the love of so brave and so promising a man. A little more
reserved and cold than ever had Miss Winthrop become, and the smile with
which she thanked these many well-wishers was something wintry and weary
in the last degree. If he had only loved her, there might have bloomed
in her heart an answering passion that would have filled her nature,